Earth Hour in California – Success or Bust?
Guest post by Russ Steele, NCWatch
At our house we set the timer to remind us to turn on all the visible out side lights. We have multiple security lights on the garage and the barn that come on when the sun goes down. My friend George Rebane has evidence that he turned on his lights for Earth Hour at Ruminations. I should have done the same, but was working on a sea level issue in R and forgot. I am glad I set the timer to remind me to turn off the outside house lights at 9:30.
The real question is did it Earth Hour make a difference one way or the other?
Roger Sowell had a good idea, he download the the graph below from www.caiso.com, the California Independent System Operator. CAISO is in charge of receiving power from power generating plants, and distributing the power throughout the state grid to the various end users.
Now compare the graph from Saturday 3/28/09 to the one on Sunday 3/29/09 shown below, note the similar slopes during the same time period. Note that annotations were added by Anthony Watts on both graphs.
Roger notes:
There was no apparent decrease in the power load throughout the state, from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. No step changes, nothing, nada, zip, zilch.
There you have it, scientific data showing that the Earth Hour was a total bust in California. If you look close, you can see a little bump up above the forecast demand, which tracked very closely with actual power consumed prior to the witching hour 8:30 to 9:30. But, it is clear that power consumption did not drop, it stayed up. Maybe all those protesters forgot to turn off the lights.
Memo to Jim Hansen:
LightsOut = 0!
Since you are on the subject of California and climate is this for real?
“News that California may ban the sale of black cars for climate protection reasons raised the hackles of many a petrolhead yesterday.”
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/03/california-to-ban-sale-of-blac.html
REPLY: Sad but true
Sad but true. (The premise seems to be that black cars require more air conditioning. But “auto-albedo” is the running joke.)
Huh? Another moderator seems to have had the same exact words in mind.
It’s kind of amazing. Google News gives about 8,000 articles that were trying to hype the reduction during one lousy unproductive weekend hour, and the result is undetectable – probably less than 1%. Now predict the reduction of electricity not during one special unproductive hour but during many productive days, weeks, years, and decades.
It’s clearly impossible. People don’t turn the lights off even if they don’t need them. Forcing them to reduce energy consumption when they do is a utopia and a green military junta would really be the only setup to achieve such a result.
The earth at night:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/earthlights2_dmsp_big.jpg
You can see how dark Africa and other less developed regions are relative to population.
http://maps.howstuffworks.com/world-population-density-map.htm
then look at life expectancy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Life_Expectancy_2008_Estimates_CIA_World_Factbook.png
I think this post misses the point. Earth Hour wasn’t about saving energy, it was a symbolic act to generate publicity and get people talking about it. This it has obviously done 🙂
You mean, in the state where lives the great martyrs of environmentalism, where they seek to ban black cars, where they seek to ban flat panel TVs, where the hippies founded paradise….they did not practice what they preach?
SHOCKED!
But what is this peculiar piece of propaganda…
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jTPC5ic6tJh9PiHscwgOANkJ17-wD977R3400
They claim a resounding success, yet all we have evidence of mostly public buildings dimming some of their lights.
I had my lights off. How come all those Californians did not practice their Green Ramadan?
Richard Heg: so what, are you trying to say that leaving the lights on at night makes you live longer? That’s a pretty silly conclusion to draw, but I can’t think of any other point you could be trying to make, other than just linking to random graphs.
Anyways, I seem to think that people who thought earth hour was about making any kind of significant impact in energy usage are missing the point by a mile. Anyone who thinks leaving the lights off for one hour a year is an energy solution needs to sit down and shut up while the grown ups talk. And I don’t think much more highly about those who thought that was the point of earth hour, even though they knew it wouldn’t ‘work’.
It was an educational/attention-getting exercise, and ‘8,000 articles’ seems to indicate success.
Didn’t have any impact on this side of the pond (certainly not in my postage stamp of a village – too many hard working farmers and realists). Maybe it’s because all the hardcore eco-nut greenies have descended on London in anticipation of the G20 protest jamboree.
With any luck they’ll stay there…
If the entire world stopped using all forms of energy for one day….. then armageddon would be postponed by exactly one day.
Julian GAll:-)
I rcently received a You Tube clip from a relative all about the first Earth our. It was a little sickening for me in its pathos, but it did say that some 50 million people worldwide participated. Put another way that means that 5,950,000,000 people didn’t! I also point out that a large number of these people who “didn’t”, “couldn’t”, even if they wanted to, which I find a little patronising for them. I would like to see some numbers for this years efforts.
Also, fairly famous personality in UK was on the radio news Saturday morning, talking about the G20 protest about jobs, globalisation, & climate change. He rather let it out of the bag when he said that the ambition was to tell governments that the “people”, whoever they may be, no longer wanted this kind of politics. Reading between the lines that is ditch free-enterprise & capitalism, & adopt marxist-socialism I guess? The writing is in the wall!
I read one article where some greenie casually mentioned how he charged up his laptop so he could run it on batteries during earth hour. You can’t make this stuff up.
Jason A – what I get from Richard Heg’s post is a link between longevity and the technology by which it is sustained. That connection seems infinitely more plausible than that between ‘death trains’ and climate change don’t you think?
” Richard Heg (22:42:57) :
Since you are on the subject of California and climate is this for real?
“News that California may ban the sale of black cars for climate protection reasons raised the hackles of many a petrolhead yesterday.””
Jason A. (00:07:42)
i do support saving energy, however, a propaganda show to promote the global warming swindle is undoubtedly condemnable.
“Jason A. (00:07:42) :
Richard Heg: so what, are you trying to say that leaving the lights on at night makes you live longer? That’s a pretty silly conclusion to draw, but I can’t think of any other point you could be trying to make, other than just linking to random graphs.”
Jason i did not comment further because i think the image i posted tells a million stories. For me the image of a dark Africa makes me think of how hard it is for children to get an education when they have to work during the day and have no light to read by night. Why would i think of that on a story relating to climate change? well because in my mind the resources and attention given to climate change takes away from more pressing human and environmental issues.
“It was an educational/attention-getting exercise, and ‘8,000 articles’ seems to indicate success.”
Yes i think you are right as an attention getting exercise it was successful however i think the AGW campaign has all the attention it needs. I am seeing a lot of attention getting exercises but not a lot of action, i am not bothered that there has not been much action because i don’t see AGW as a big problem, however the attention getting has damaged/has the potential to damage science and progress on more pressing environmental and human welfare issues.
Well Jason, perhaps it’s all a bit too sophisticated for you light switch campaigners but a quick look at the correlation between the amount of light and life expectancy could have something to do with the difference between living in a hut burning animal dung for fuel and relying on a witch doctor to mend your ailing body and living in a modern climate controlled house with its hygienic waste disposal and access to modern medicine etc.
Just a thought.
Check out this piece of communist idiocy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/28/green-future-carbon-emissions-climate
Though mass public transport will be the travel mode of choice, personal cars will remain. You might not own one yourself, instead borrowing from clubs when needed.
That’s called car hire. It has been around for decades.
Expect punishing taxes on plane tickets, tied to their carbon cost, to discourage flying unless there really is no alternative. In these situations, a personal carbon-rationing system, linked to national CO2 emissions targets, will allow individuals to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Right, so we have to live on rations based on bad science. Get a clue, in a future full of clean abundant energy with energy security for all nations, the global warming scare will have fallen apart by then and so will the villianisation of CO2.
Bricks coated with solar paint will be held together with cement that soaks up CO2 from the air around it.
The brick, the cement and the solar paint have a limited volume. How can they soak up CO2 indefinitely?
Automatic controls will warm rooms only when needed and switch appliances and lights off when they’re not needed.
We’ve had them for years.
Our throwaway culture will disappear.
So no packaging, no bad products, no faulty products, no wear and tear?
Someone is being naive.
Products will be made to last
Therefore Apple will sell you a computer made to last, and then shut itself down. Levi’s will sell you jeans made to last, and then shut itself down. Sony will sell you a TV made to last, and then shut itself down. Tesla will make you a car built to last, and then shut itself down.
Naive.
Rain will be collected from home and office rooftops and filtered using carbon-free electricity so that it is drinkable. Any water drained away in a building will be recycled and treated locally to wash clothes or flush toilets. Bottled water will be banned.
This guy knows less about the human body and water than he does about everything else so far.
Drinking purified or distilled rain water washes electrolytes out of your body. This leaves you feeling depleted and unhealthy. Bottled mineral water does the opposite.
Food will come from local farms or factories to reduce the carbon cost of transport.
Yes, I can see it right now. Glaswegians will have to use chillies grown in Scotland despite the climate being wrong for chillies. Siberians will have to grow rice, tomatoes and potatoes in the freezing cold. All food trade routes will disappear but, hey, Ethiopia is a good place for Ethiopians to grow any food they need, right????
Meat lovers, because of their high-carbon diets, will have to use up their personal carbon rations whenever they bite into a steak or else make sure their food comes from local, sustainable farms that produce meat artificially.
Ah, those communist rations again.
Working class and poor people around the world rely on meat, of any quality, to make up for any deficiencies in the rest of their diet. Asking them to live on carbon rations is the same as asking them to take meat off their menu and substitute it for a low carbon alternative, which are all lower in protein. The quality of their health would decrease as a result.
This idea of personal carbon rations is elitist because only the rich can afford it. For them it is free because they interest they earn on their savings is enough to always buy more carbon credits. Everyone else pays through their teeth.
What would happen is that those elitists who try to impose such a system on others will meet the same fate as Nicolae Ceauşescu or Saddam Hussein.
They can be sure of that.
@Jason
The details of “earth hour” were actually so vague that people could claim success and failure at the same time.
Were we asked to just switch off the lights – or switch off everything ?
Was it supposed to make a big difference – or just be an empty gesture ?
Do we really need more “consciousness raising” ?
There is a real danger now of a backlash – people are just fed up of this sanctimonious posturing and will turn their backs on even the sensible parts of the eco-manifesto.
Julian Gall (23:37:57) :
I think this post misses the point. Earth Hour wasn’t about saving energy, it was a symbolic act
It is you who is missing the point. the graphs show how few took part in this symbolic act.
Dear Julian Gall, that’s a surprising statement of yours that the goal was publicity. I think that the publicity about global warming issues is huge. I think that none of us disagrees that there’s a lot of talk – and articles in newspapers – about global warming (non-)issues.
I personally estimate that this topic is being talked about roughly 1,000 times more frequently than what this non-problem would deserve. Well, you can try to increase the factor from 1,000 to 10,000. There can be not 30,000 Google News articles per month about “global warming” but 300,000. Articles on skeptical webs can be multiplied by 10, too. Is that the goal? What is it good for?
What people like me are saying is that this global warming talk has nothing to do with reality. If there is a man-made contribution to climate change, it is completely unspectacular and wouldn’t be worth 5 minutes of a sane person’s time in a sane world, except for a few specialists who are interested in this discipline as academicians. Ideas about decreasing the energy consumption by 50% or 80% (in the absence of a technological breakthrough similar to a miracle) are completely insane.
So this complete failure of the Earth Hour indeed shows that the global warming policies are what they are – inflated and meaningless talk by people who have lost all the contact with reality – the reality of thermometers and graphs showing the consumption of electricity or fuels. And I am confident that this insight – that this whole AGW industry is fraud and makes no sense – will be getting increasingly clear as people continue to talk about it.
So I think it is not really in the interest of the AGW ideologues to make people talk (and think) about this issue because the more they talk (and think), the more it is getting clear to them that this whole machinery is based on nonsense and lies, and the closer is the day when the main exponents of this megafraud (measured by the money they have earned from it) will be sitting in the jail because unlike the energy savings, the money that these people earn by saying untrue things at important places are real.
“Richard Heg: so what, are you trying to say that leaving the lights on at night makes you live longer? That’s a pretty silly conclusion to draw, but I can’t think of any other point you could be trying to make, other than just linking to random graphs”
Jason A, what are you trying to say? That anthropogenic sources of CO2 are somehow linked to a trivial change in global temperature than can be almost completely explained by solar variability and nearly fraudulent manipulation of data that is incorrectly adjusted for urban heat island effect? That’s a pretty silly conclusion to draw. I can’t imagine any other point you’d be trying to make, other than just linking two random graphs.
We’ve just had a blackout in Sydney which left a big part of Downtown and some suburbs without power for several hours – less than two days after “Earth Hour”. Interesting comparison between the faux outage and a real one here :
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/now_thats_a_real_earth_hour_or_two/
Fear mongering about Britain’s rivers drying up and more talk of rationing an infinitely available resource
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/29/environment-agency-water-household-bills
Bit of a reality check in Sydney Australia although the twitter reports mentioned suggest that the more pragmatic are taking it in their stride. 🙂
“Some joked that the residents of Sydney were being punished for not switching off enough lights during Earth Hour on Saturday.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/5075408/Sydney-hit-by-massive-blackout.html
Thousands of homes and offices in the centre of Sydney have been left without power after four high voltage cables providing electricity to the city failed.
By Bonnie Malkin in Sydney
Last Updated: 9:52AM BST 30 Mar 2009
Sydney hit by massive blackout
The blackout struck at about 4.30pm, leaving dozens of office workers trapped in lifts and shutting down traffic lights at about 100 city-centre intersections.
Tens of thousands of homes in the east of Sydney were also hit by the blackout.
The power outage plunged the city into chaos as office workers attempted to make their way home.
Two major arterial roads, including the Sydney Harbour tunnel, were closed to traffic, and the city streets quickly became gridlocked.
Police flooded into the CBD to direct traffic and the emergency services responded to at least 40 calls from people stuck in lifts or relating to automatic fire alarms.
The train system, which runs on a separate power supply, kept running, but the Opera House was forced to cancel its performances for the evening.
Energy Australia said the blackout was caused by a fault that affected four high voltage cables. Power started returning to the city after about three hours.
The unfolding drama played out on micro-blogging site Twitter, with hundreds of people affected by the outage “tweeting” about their experiences http://search.twitter.com/search?q=Sydney+blackout.
Some joked that the residents of Sydney were being punished for not switching off enough lights during Earth Hour on Saturday.
Travel man http://twitter.com/ttravelman said: “Will have to work tonight fixing computer stuff related to the Sydney CBD Blackout”, while Simon Willis http://twitter.com/Simon_Willis remarked: “ sydney she loves a drama. choppers, alarms, fire brigage, ambulance. Just love it. Wish the blackout lasted all night and storms rolled in.”
At my workplace, we received an edict from corporate headquarters on compliance with Earth Hour, presumably to shore up the company’s “green credentials”. Almost every single item on the list was stuff that we actually do every evening (and not just before the weekend), out of common sense rather than pseudo-religious credo.
Almost everything; normally, we do not bother to turn off the shredder because it’s “power on” LED and whatever else it does in stand by consumes only ~15 mW.
But this weekend, by corporate edict, we turned off the shredder too. So we saved 15 mW. Hooray.
“Lubos Motl (23:00:45) :
It’s clearly impossible. People don’t turn the lights off even if they don’t need them. Forcing them to reduce energy consumption when they do is a utopia and a green military junta would really be the only setup to achieve such a result.”
Maybe most people, but me, I do! I turn stuff off not in use because I don’t want some private, ex state-owned utility, ie, taxpayer funded utility sold off in the name of “efficiency”, to “cream” profits from me (Bills) for their share holders. Bugger that!
When I lived in New Zealand I lived in one of the poorest economic regions in the land, yet, *yet* it had *THE* most expensive unit price for electricity, in the land.
Earth Hour is tokenism, “indulgences” of old.
In Oslo my webcam did actually show less light pollution during the Earth Hour. Here’s a comparison:
http://voksenlia.net/nytt/2009/earthhour-20090328.gif
The pictures are 20 minutes apart. The clouds may have changed slightly and some lights would perhaps be switched off anyway, but the action is still likely to have reduced the lights somewhat. I wish Earth Hour would be about light pollution rather than about climate, though.
I turned my lights off. It was kind of nice, actually, going off the grid for an hour.
I fired up the charcoal grill, lit a couple of kerosene lanterns, and instead of heat from the electric heater (which would have wasted electricity generated cleanly by our local nuclear power plant), I made a nice little campfire out back.
I think I dumped more carbon into the atmosphere in that one hour than I typically do in a whole week. I’ll have to do this more often.
“Jason A. (00:07:42) :
Anyways, I seem to think that people who thought earth hour was about making any kind of significant impact in energy usage are missing the point by a mile. Anyone who thinks leaving the lights off for one hour a year is an energy solution needs to sit down and shut up while the grown ups talk. And I don’t think much more highly about those who thought that was the point of earth hour, even though they knew it wouldn’t ‘work’.
It was an educational/attention-getting exercise, and ‘8,000 articles’ seems to indicate success.”
When people realise what they are “doing”, they will soon realise they are foolish.
Oh hang on, this is about saving the planet, climate change, climate chaos, global warming, climate pollution…all braught about by the 280ppm – 380ppm increase in CO2 emissions as a result of the industrial revolution (Thanks Britain), and burning fossil fuels. The mind boggles!
Richard Heg (22:42:57) :
Since you are on the subject of California and climate is this for real?
“News that California may ban the sale of black cars for climate protection reasons raised the hackles of many a petrolhead yesterday.”
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/03/california-to-ban-sale-of-blac.html
REPLY: Sad but true
Excellent – the more this sort of rubbish happens, the more this will get up peoples noses – and the sooner the backlash begins.
This is important information.
No politician can refer to Earth Hour and say “The people asked for our “Green Policies”.
They don’t.
It looks like WWF once again is making a hype out of nothing.
Other hypes based on thin air:
Cause: Global Warming and melting ice causes Polar Bears to:
– drown
– travel large distances to find prey which is disturbing their energy balance
– lack of prey causes
– disappear as a species
WWF went through a development from environmental protection to a political movement.
Their “hog wash” stories about our climate and melting poles are copied and spread by our main stream media.
It looks if the people reject the political and environmental activist role of this organization.
People would like to see WWF return to the protection of the forests and the monkeys again.
Putting the money on the table for a WWF donation is one thing, switching off the lights on Earth Hour another.
Heres a thought. If ya wanted to really dent energy consumption in cities, rather than turn the building lights off one hour a year, how about turning them off every night when empty… and how about killing every other street light? I wonder if there is a place to see how much energy your city uses for lighting power, ect. I bet its staggering:)
I meant to turn on the porch light, but I forgot:) You probably wouldnt have seen it passed the street light from space anyhow:)
I live in London, and looking out of my windows on Saturday evening I was happy to see that most houses in my neighbourhood were well-lit as usual. It was not noticeably different to any other Saturday night. However, this is a working class area where people care about the important things – e.g. being able to work and feed their families – but don’t give a toss, generally, about GW.
In the office this morning I asked several people if they had done anything for Earth Hour. Responses ranged from “No”, to “Earth what?” to “Oh yeah, I forgot it was on, but I was watching TV with the lights off, so does that count?”
In my circle of colleagues and neighbours, I seem to be easily the most “aware” of these things. Too bad I’m also an AGW sceptic. :o)
No, I don’t think «all those protesters forgot to turn off the light». They’re simply too small of a community! The problem is that they are damn too loud!
I notice how Earth hour was scheduled right at the time when usage usually goes down. Most likely to be able to say it had an effect, of course when you look at the graphs and the projected usage it really isn’t so, no suprise . For those who claim it was about symbolism, I say again that I am wearing my CO2 colored ribbon (which you cannot see or smell) but symbolically it shows I care. That and $0.10155 will get you 1 kwh at my house.
It looks like the effect was to cause the sharp drop in electricity which usually occurs when people go to bed — at 11 PM in the second graph — to be advanced to 10 PM in the second graph. So there was a difference, but only of one hour, and it occurred at a convenient time to turn the lights down. Symbolic but nothing else.
I posted a reply to that article:
/Mr Lynn
we bought extra lights for climate Ramadan, and we were’t alone. I did a spot count of the neighborhood from the porch. There were more places lit up on Earth day, 85, then the night before, 79.
I think I’ll compare Friday night to Saturday next week and see if it is a general occurance.
Were the planet groaners sitting this one out, and the extra illumination due to a few more folks staying home on Saturday night , or did we get 6 extra counter protest lamps?
Those are the two possibilities. Either which way North Highlands boycotted Smerf day.
I agree with jason. Humans don’t need to see in the dark. Why would we? It’s not like seeing in the dark is beneficial to our health. What, are we walking down stairs now? Are we living in places filled with poisonous night-active animals? No!
Lubos Motl (23:00:45) :
“It’s clearly impossible. People don’t turn the lights off even if they don’t need them. Forcing them to reduce energy consumption when they do is a utopia and a green military junta would really be the only setup to achieve such a result.”
No Lubos, no junta necessary. That is what the smart grid will accomplish, whereby power could be selectively denied on a customer by customer basis should the demand exceed the supply. http://www.oe.energy.gov/smartgrid.htm
Electrical power demand is expected to double in the next twenty years, requiring an additional 550 new large coal-fired power plants to meet the demand. If those new plants aren’t built, rolling blackouts (on a selective smart-grid basis) are inevitable.
Eco-socialists arrested in terror plot
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/30/g20-protest-explosives-plot-arrests
Jason A. It was a pretty transparent point if you ask me. The areas that are lit at night, showing up vividly on the world view, are also the areas with the highest longevity rate. I think this very easy point is that electrical usage is an indicator of advancement and longer and safer lives. And yes, you can equate the lack of change of electrical usage as a success because people talked of it anyway, but it is a calloused way to look at life and will not serve them forever.
How do you know the publicity stunt worked? That the WWF and assorted environmental groups were able to generate “8000” pot banging articles proves that WWF and assorted environmental groups can generate “8000” pot banging articles, nothing more. If there had been a measurable decrease in energy usage during that hour, then we certainly would have heard about it. Using Lubos flamboyant descriptior, the green military junto is talking to itself and trying to legitimate its current and future actions.
Richard Heg:
Nice point.
Jason A’s point suggests to me many people don’t realize how important the energy called electricity is to extending life. It also tells me many people have become too used to its convenience. Something, 3rd world countries have yet to realize on a mass basis.
Regards
The cynic within me says that the Earth Hour people looked at the graphs ahead of time and chose the hour to match the normal decline after 8 PM, hoping that gullible media types wouldn’t look too closely and report that the protest caused the power use to decline.
Going, going,…
gone?
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/climo&hot.html
I’m just glad the “day ahead demand forecast” didn’t show a steep drop for the hour. It’s kinda like they knew it wasn’t going to work anyway. I wish certain other people could be that conservative in their forecasting. 🙂
It might be more realistic to compare March 28 demand with March 21 and possibly the demand on April 4. The Staurday energy using routines are normally different from Fridays and Sundays. What was the energy demand trend the other states of the US , the provinces of Canada and the EU countries ? Could there be an inverse pattern with like California the most environmentally conscious state ignoring Earth day while maybe surprises from other states? Did somebody check Hansen’s delectricity demand?
@Jason A
I think you are the one missing the point. Having access to abundant electricty
means that hospitals and care institutions can run 24/7 and thus prolong lives.
Not much evidence of that in a darkend Africa, don’t you think?
BTW, this adult is telling you to pull your head in.
Jeez.
Here in NC we went to the movie theater at that time. I can assure you that the theater house lights were out during earth Hour…
🙂
Why are you wasting your time on this?
I lived in southern Nevada (Las Vegas area) for a few years and nobody needed to ban black or other dark car paints there. Most people had enough sense on their own to buy a light-colored vehicle. The locals call them ‘desert friendly.’
The only controversy was how dark should the window tints be? Too dark actually makes the car interior hotter.
For some reason the same logic didn’t apply to home roofs. Many still used darker colors.
What people should have done was just flip the main breakers and live without electricity for a few days. Get used to what it will be like if we don’t build enough new power plants to provide a reliable supply in the future.
Jason A. (00:07:42) :
“Richard Heg: so what, are you trying to say that leaving the lights on at night makes you live longer? ”
No – the point is that HAVING lights to turn on means one is living in a developed society. Which, in turn, leads to longer life. Life in “undeveloped” areas is still, as always, short, nasty and brutal.
It’s “your” conclusion that’s silly.
Wow Jason I have no trouble seeing Richards point. Good post Richard. Lige expectancy correlates very closely with the availability of energy. Both per capita use and availability of energy correlate very strongly with life expectancy.
As for Earth hour it was once again a triumph of symbolism over substance and self righteous sloganeering over rational thought.
Who are the grown ups?
Richard Heg
So-a definite link then between darkness and fertility. Surprising, I thought, when the great Northeast Power Outage of 2003 occured that there was a spike in births 9 months later. Must be a cultural thing then.
In Ontario (the Canadian Province, not the California county!) the local Power Authority trumpeted a drop of 6% in demand. Yet I checked their web site and this was not the case – it actually went up slightly.
http://www.geocities.com/mcmgk/Earth_Hour_Ontario_Power.html
But as we all know, when it comes to global warming the actual truth doesn’t matter to far too many people!
Jason A.: “It was an educational/attention-getting exercise, and ‘8,000 articles’ seems to indicate success.”
No, it was an exercise in ecopropaganda. From the Earth Hour website:
“This year, Earth Hour has been transformed into the world’s first global election, between Earth and global warming.
For the first time in history, people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote – Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, or leaving them on is a vote for global warming.”
http://www.earthhour.org/about/
As I showed in the post above, it was a total fizzle at least in our neck of the woods!
Late Sydney Earth Hour(s):
Monday, 30 March 2009 11:13 – Sydney power blackout causes chaos
I think you need more info. to claim no effect.
Looking at the graphs the 28Mar09 pre Earth hour consumption is flatlining at approx 24000MW then it picks up from about 18:30hrs on to peak at 26500MW before dropping to average approx. 26000MW during EH.
29Mar09 shows approx flatlining at 23500MW before picking up at approx 17:00 to peak at 27300MW before dropping to an approx average of 27000MW for the EH equivalent period. So 1000MW difference = 1GW = approx one power station.
On these figures I’d say that is about a 4% reduction in consumption – significant in terms of some of the consumption reduction targets talked about. But these figures aren’t enough – one needs to see ambient temps., sunset times, details of loads on the transmission network etc etc.
Take an average UK suburban home with 10 60W lights on dropping to one – that is a 540W saving. Half a kW is significant and simply requires switching off. Ok so Al Gore’s personal consumption makes him look a fool but I think you are kidding yourselves if you think reducing personal consumption is irrelevant. The power stations aren’t putting the juice into some secret bank of fixed resistors…. are they? 🙂
slowtofollow: “I think you need more info. to claim no effect.”
From CAISO archive – Total power demand for Saturday, March 21 at 9:00 PM- 25.5 GW
From CAISO archive – Total power demand for Saturday, March 28 at 9:00 PM- 25.4 GW
Looks like simply a humungous impact to me!
This was due to all the people sitting in the dark with nothing better to do than log onto the internet to argue about Earth Hour.
slowtofollow: “Half a kW is significant and simply requires switching off. Ok so Al Gore’s personal consumption makes him look a fool but I think you are kidding yourselves if you think reducing personal consumption is irrelevant. The power stations aren’t putting the juice into some secret bank of fixed resistors…. are they? :)”
Ah, you forgot about those of us celebrating Human Achievement Hour at the same time! The savings from turning off 10 16 watt CFLs are dwarfed by activating the self cleaning oven, lowering the fridge freezer temperature, turning on the clothes and dish washers, the clothes dryer, electric space heaters and a swarth of incandescent light bulbs all at 8:30! I figure a climate realist can outpower a climate sheep at a ratio of at least 40:1! Not fair really is it?
Just like good little AGW followers, they make claims that are not supported by the real numbers.
Here in BC, less people than last year turned off their lights… “but it was a success” according to them.
There referendum is a flop. The majority don’t want our politiciens to deal with this non-problem.
Lubos Motl (23:00:45) :
“It’s kind of amazing. Google News gives…”
Don´t forget Al Gore is a member of their board of directors.
Jason A. (00:07:42) :
Richard Heg: so what, are you trying to say that leaving the lights on at night makes you live longer? That’s a pretty silly conclusion to draw, but I can’t think of any other point you could be trying to make, other than just linking to random graphs.
Correlation doesn’t equal causation, Jason. But then, this is the same mistake you AGWers always make. The lighting is simply a proxie. It is evidence of economic development, and of higher living standards, which lead to a longer life-expectancy.
It was an educational/attention-getting exercise, and ‘8,000 articles’ seems to indicate success.
Amazing, isn’t it, that after all these years, and with a continual barrage of hype and propaganda via the MSM, schools, and even a Nobel-prize winning “movie”, that they still need to peddle the product of manmade global warming/climate change alarmism? You think the 8,000 articles hyping this “event” whose sole purpose was to promote “awareness” of a pseudoscientific ideology which has been trumpeted worldwide on a non-stop basis for years is evidence of “success”? Talk about cognitive dissonance!
In regards to Richard Heg’s post:
Note that the ultimate goal, assuming you believe the AGW hypotheiss, is to cut back world production of CO2 producing energy by 80%. Find Haiti and
Somalia on the world map. They’re the two countries already below that 80% worldwide average figure.
What baseline are they using to calculate a percentage reduction in consumption? They shouldn’t use the hour before. Shouldn’t they use the consumption figures from 24 hours before “earth hour”? Or perhaps an average of the prior 7 to 10 days at that hour? I don’t know. I can see plenty of room for fun with figures here to make earth hour look like a major triumph.
Earth Hour is rich in irony considering that well meaning eco folks are hell bent on bringing civilization headlong into another Dark Age. Although the scary part is that there are plenty of other groups out there also seeking the same result.
Along a similar thread, there was an interesting NY Times report on CFLs not performing as intended. I would like to warn that I had one of these wonderful earth saving lights catch on fire recently. The base overheated, like fluorescent ballasts tend to do and the next thing I knew there was a whooshing sound, darkness, flickering and smoke pouring out from the large base of the bulb. The only thing that saved my fixture was that I quickly shut off the switch to the light. It took hours of open windows on a freezing cold day to remove the stench from my home. We were fortunate that I happened to be nearby when this occurred.
I’m wondering how many homes and lives will be lost to fire due to these defective CFL bulbs.
Nuclear fusion is coming sooner than most people realize.
The Z-machine effort at Sandia has nearly all the requisite technologies in place to successfully develop an inertial confinement fusion system based on z-pinch methods. The plasma temperatures are high enough for clean (non-neutronic) He3 fusion and beyond.
In thirty years we could be in a whole new game. If we had to we could use fusion-based power to suck CO2 out of the air, to crack CO2 & make new hydrocarbons (FT synthesis). This is what we need to be researching & planning for, not expensive wind farms.
Unfortunately z-pinch tech also represents a new hazard in terms of nuclear proliferation.
Ahhh, civilization. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it.
Mark above – yeah, that 40:1 is a killer!
Re: personal impact- I wonder if a better way to make the point about the impact of personal behaviour would be for the Earth Hour to become the big switch on?
If we all ramped up the pointless devices we had on for an hour I think the effect could be a bit easier to spot? 🙂 You could look at each one as a little way to celebrate human achievement and intellect? Just make sure you check the total breaker capacity before you chuck all the switches – it’d be a real shame to miss human achievement hour trying to change a fat fuse in the dark! ;0
Interesting stat from the CAISO archive – any idea why it is so far off the actual demand line on the graph in the post? Looks closer to the forecast figure to me?
Another take might be that the number of AGW proponents that went dark was offset by the number of disgusted skeptics that went full power.
You can’t turn your lights off.
It takes too long to warm up those darn new expensive energy saving bulbs. It is easier to just leave all the lights on because you never know what room you are going to walk into when you need something.
Cause and effect, where there is an action there is a reaction.
Serenity now !!!!!!!!!!
I spent Earth hour with the lights off…but that’s because I was watching a movie with a pretty girl.
Not sure about Communism, but exactly how much CO2 does a bong release?
My first instinct having read the article was that “you couldn’t make this stuff up” but clearly somebody has and it isn’t April 1st – I double checked.
The article appears in a section headed “Road to Recovery – How to Fix the Global Economy”.
OT:
The Caitlin arctic survey don’t appear to have made a post since 10.40 am Saturday 28 March. It is now day 30.
I suspect if they are in trouble the first news will be no news.
See what can happen if this madness goes ahead?
http://news.uk.msn.com/world/article.aspx?cp-documentid=15538016
As a conservative democrat, living in Northern Calif., I turned my lights on to demonstrate my concern about saving and preserving the Constitution of the United States of America and the freedoms, blessings and God given opportunities it provides. Turning the lights off to show concern about the climate has the same value as turning the lights off to prevent earthquakes, sunspots, volcanic activity, or gamma ray bursts. On every Earth Day I will demonstrate by holding my own personal Save The Constitution Day… at least until they completely destroy it and take it away!
Stephen
slowtofollow:: “Interesting stat from the CAISO archive – any idea why it is so far off the actual demand line on the graph in the post? Looks closer to the forecast figure to me?”
The archive now says 25.6 for 9:00 on Earth Hour day. Either it has been updated or I read/transcribed it wrong the first time. It’s not far off the graph in the original article which can clearly be seen as being under 26.0 (GW translating to 26,000 MW) – I’d eyeball at 25.8 vs. the 25.6. If the figures are updated to fine tune the result over time then that might explain it.
leebert (06:54:29) :
“If we had to we could use fusion-based power to suck CO2 out of the air, to crack CO2 & make new hydrocarbons (FT synthesis). This is what we need to be researching & planning for, not expensive wind farms.”
They do this and all life on earth will go instinct. The biosphere needs CO2 to thrive. The more CO2, the better the life cycle works, not the other way around.
so what, are you trying to say that leaving the lights on at night makes you live longer?
Yes. What Richard Heg said.
I do not, however, consider AGW to be a “swindle”, but an error that has snowballed (as it were).
Nuclear fusion is coming sooner than most people realize.
If that is true, this entire flap is moot.
Oh my gosh!
The great Rushbo just mentioned Anthony’s blog!
Wohoo!
REPLY: Thanks Cathy, you share in this success. Thank you for your help and support. – Anthony
Are there any similar historical graphs showing usage of power in California? I’m sure the Greenies will still claim success unless there is additional proof no change in California power usage can be historically documented.
Next to liberalism and the Democrat Party, man made Global Warming is the biggest hoax ever forced upon the people of this planet. It is a farce, a myth and a hypothetical theory. The Earth is 14 billion years old- we have around 120 years of modern man industrial production. 120 years is a sliver of a fraction of a fraction of 14 billion years of Earth time…to think that man made factors are warming the globe is assinine. It’s a huge ponzi scheme designed to create power, control and money via cap/trade legislation and placing the Chicago Climate Exchange organization in place as a carbon credit processor when it is passed. Funny how Obama was a Board Director in that organization back in 2000-2001 that funnelled $1mil in grant money to it’s research and who stands to make billions from it soon.
Following the NewScientist article on California cars, the director of the Air Resource Board, Stanley Young, posted a comment, clarifying that they were not specifically targeting black paint, but considering regulations for “a measure known as Cool Cars (not Cool Paints) designed to reduce the temperature of cars standing in the sun using both reflective paint and glass.”
Well, OK, but why—you may ask—should the Air Resource Board care how hot your car gets on a summer day? Well, because you have to run your air conditioner more, and that uses more gasoline, and that emits CO2, and that—well, you know what that does, right?
He concludes, “Fighting climate change will require all of us to be creative and innovative. Accurate stories about California’s efforts in creditable outlets like the New Scientist will help us achieve that goal.”
This is a state some $40 billion in the red and about to go bankrupt, but they can afford to pay people to create regulations to fight ‘climate change’.
It’s a measure of the madness that has overtaken the Western world. It’s so extensive that I fear the prediction of Lubos Motl (02:15:32), above, will fail to come to pass:
Unfortunately, the “main exponents of this megafraud” are the entire political leadership of the USA and Western Europe, plus the professional bureaucrats of the UN. Much as I would love to see them all behind bars, it doesn’t seem likely.
The ‘global warming’ myth is now so pervasive that the assumption of its truth underlies practically every story and advertisement in the media. Example: Little schoolgirl on stage declaims, “I’m the Earth burning up from global warming!” (ad for medicated wipes, which squirming dad in audience wishes he had used). Example: a news item on the radio announces that the Boys and Girls Clubs are engaging in programs to raise ‘awareness’ of global warming. Shouldn’t they be playing basketball, or something?
Turn on the radio or the TV, and that’s all you hear. So it must be true, right?
It’s going to take a concerted effort by scientists and other Realists to make the public realize that there is no global warming, and that carbon dioxide is not a problem. It’s got to be a revelation so dramatic, so shocking that the media cannot ignore it. Otherwise, the political class can ride the momentum they’ve got toward their goal of stringent controls and taxes on energy, dictatorial control over every aspect of our lives, and massive transfers of wealth to ‘the poor’ of the world, to stifle their development as well.
What could that revelation be? How about a “Save the plants!” movement? All you have to do is convince people that reducing CO2, as the dastardly warm-mongers want, will kill off all the plant life and turn the Earth into a desert! Is it fair to fight hyperbole with hyperbole, alarmism with alarmism?
/Mr Lynn
Too bad that the GW politics has robbed ‘Earth Hour’ of real utilitarian meaning. We should conserve power by eliminating unnecessary (note the word) use of electricity. Were Earth Hour about light pollution* as Steinar and others suggest, it would have value, but the rabid AGW and anti-technology eco political propagandists dominate.
* If we gradually eliminated the unnecessary lighting of the skies, we’d save municipal, business and even residential dollars. Makes sense to those few of us on the fiscal conservative endangered species list. And we’d enjoy night skies.
This reminds me of the flap raised by the [feminists] about the supposed increase in wife beating during the Super Bowl. IIRC after a couple of decades someone actually analyzed the police blotter data and found no statistical difference, possibly a decrease. But if you ask liberals I bet most believe it is true. Unfortunately, Goebbels was right. If you yell something loud enough and often enough most people believe it is true.
OTOH, IIRC the increase in births ~9 months after a major power blackout may be statistically significant.
So, there are probably papers with statistical methods for testing these things. The numbers are suggestive but we are supporters of science so they need to be ‘audited.’ e.g. Maybe Sundays usually show an increase in power consumption. As someone mentioned, are there seasonal effects such as steadily changing power consumption as the day gets longer or correlation with the temperature?
Stephen–conservative Democrat is a non-sequitur. Did you vote for Obama?
Interesting how even the simplest of “Green” arguments/claims falsify in the face of concrete data (truth).
But, AGW is politics now, so “truth” is of little consequence to our “decision makers”.
^”F” Global Warming:
The earth is 4 billion years old, not 14 billion.
Mark
Earthhour in CA was lost before it even began.
The per capita consumption by residential is too low, compared to the other sectors.
Now, if you had malls, auto malls, street lights, commercial and industrial lighting that were turned off when nobody is around (2am etc), then you could make a dent.
Because of rampant and excessive hardwiring, whole sections of cities will get cut when power is lacking. We know this as rolling blackouts.
The people who wire this stuff up are only thinking of the $$$ they make selling the power, not the slightest bit concerned about problems down the road.
Taxing CO2 will do nothing to alleviate the grid problem of hardwiring.
And it is heavily hardwired. The only meaningful switches are at the substations. Feast or Famine.
Ok after that Gruaniad (British joke) article, full of utopian dreams & wishes, (well it was certainly full of something) how do they use electricity to efficiently filter water? I alway understood the finest way was to use chlorine tablet into the rainwater, then pass it through a “CARBON” filter, & then dose it with a dash of chlorine for shelf life, just like Perrier does!
leebert
As soon as Fusion is available you may be certain that the environmental groups will be rabidly opposed to it. if they cared a with about the environment they would all be pro nuclear right now.
In over 30 years as a professional scientist and concerned person I have never heard or seen any honest or even remotely informed person who would not agree that ordinary nuclear fission power wins any contest on environmental friendliness hands down over anything else. It also wins easily in terms of waste and safety. All other sources of power are worse by orders of magnitude yet the so called “environmentalists” like Greenpeace are rabidly anti nuclear.
Can someone please help me out here:
If an electric power company normally uses 10 tons of coal during a particular time period on a particular day, and they anticipate no changes in demand; then the power company will still use 10 tons of coal even if everyone turns off every single electrical device. Where is the reduction in CO2. (?) How long does it take a power company to adjust fuel usage to demand (downwards)?
Or am I just missing something (probably). Wouldn’t it make more sense to ask the power generating companies to reduce power by some % for some length of time so we all get a good dose of the effect of reduced consumption and feel good about reduced CO2? Oh wait, that will happen enough this coming summer I guess, with rolling blackouts.
🙂
Mark T (09:14:08) :
^”F” Global Warming:
The earth is 4 billion years old, not 14 billion.
Mark
—
This reminds me of the joke about the solar astronomer who was giving a public lecture about the nature our sun. At the end of his talk, he stated that the sun would probably die out in about 5 billion years. When he had finished, a man sheepishly came up to him and asked “…umm…how long did you say it would take for our sun to die out?” “Five billion years,” the astronomer replied. “Phew,” said the man, wiping the sweat from his brow, “I thought you said 5 million years…”
“It’s going to take a concerted effort by scientists and other Realists to make the public realize that there is no global warming, and that carbon dioxide is not a problem. ”
I dunno – I think Gaia herself may be assisting. I’m sure the people in the north west are starting to doubt after two years of freezing their tails off. As this continues they are going to get mighty angry at someone – politicians most likely particularly ones imposing costly but useless climate change policies. First big test will be British Columbia in May. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Gordon Campbell turfed out on his butt – the only problem being that given the nature of BC politics, his replacement is likely to be even worse! After a few of these greenie politicians get turfed, the others will be like rats leaving a sinking ship! That will spell the end of the Climate Change movement!
Today on The Anthropogenic’s Court (queue suspenseful music) – Andrew says AGW has something to do with the house he bought being hotter by a degree or two than it should have been, which caused it to burn down faster than he was able to try to put out the fire that tragically struck his home. Yes, he admits he was drunk smoking and fell asleep, but he says that doesn’t disprove his claim of faster/more extreme burning. He’s suing the human race for damages and the cost of the cigarettes and booze… We’ll be back…
Andrew
Wondering Aloud (05:29:16) : As for Earth hour it was once again a triumph of symbolism over substance and self righteous sloganeering over rational thought.
Symbolism over substance.
It’s always symbolism over substance.
“Richard Heg: “so what, are you trying to say that leaving the lights on at night makes you live longer? That’s a pretty silly conclusion to draw”
Yeah, I guess that we professional highway engineers were downright stupid to call the lighting at signalized intersections and freeway interchanges “safety lighting” . . . NOT. The same with outdoor lighting which keeps the burglars and other criminals at bay. Stupid is shivering in the dark for no valid reason.
“Goredom”:Feeling oneself bored of global warming related ideas and/or theories.
Richard Heg (22:42:57) :
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/03/california-to-ban-sale-of-blac.html
Someone needs to tell them that when a black thing reflects all the incoming light it’s called a white thing…
OK, what is it going to take to get people educated enough to understand that WE (i.e. people) can NOT legislate physics?
“If you look close, you can see a little bump up above the forecast demand, which tracked very closely with actual power consumed prior to the witching hour 8:30 to 9:30. ”
Um, I think that was people like me who turned on all our stuff at about 8 rather than 8:30 … didn’t want to “miss” the actual start time 😎
BTW, a walkabout of the neighborhood before and after showed no net change. For each house that went dark (2 of them?) there were a couple that lit up (and then some, like my Christmas Lights 😎 but the vast majority just didn’t do a darned thing. Life goes on…
Wondering Aloud,
I wholeheartedly agree with your comment. Nuclear is the cheapest, cleanest, safest. Combine with electric or hydrogen-powered vehicles and mainstream energy-based pollution would be gone.
The “Green” agenda is “unthinking ideology”, not a product of rational thought. Consequently, as you suggest, Green solutions are rarely sound — either scientifically, practically, or with regard to the actual outcome.
All this from someone who fervently wants a greener society. Thing is, as an Engineering Scientist, I want it done “right”.
Mark (08:15:49) “If the figures are updated to fine tune the result over time then that might explain it.” …. I’m sure I’ve heard that in another context?….
Agree re: eyeball values – I risked turning the brightness up for a mo. and all became clear! Looks like were at a bit less than a power station worth now. Maybe by the end of the week the figures will have crept up/down a bit more!? 🙂 There is a comment somewhere above about one of the utilities claiming a 6% demand drop – anybody work in the industry who can give us a bit of real info?
Also I wonder what happened at 10:50am on the 28th?
Yup, in spite of esurance’s non-stop green-agenda driven ads for this nonsensical hour, I and everyone I know chose to simply go about business as usual. For the record, there are no CFLs in my house, either. I’ll pay for higher quality lighting, thank you (fluorescent lights give me a headache to boot). I wish I could say I was baking 10 cakes or something at that time, while microwaving a cat and leaving the fridge door open, but alas, I was simply watching my big-screen TV with most of the lights in the house left on. I think our halogen floor lamp was turned on, however. Too bad I can’t buy those anymore.
Mark
Jason A. (00:07:42) : Richard Heg: so what, are you trying to say that leaving the lights on at night makes you live longer? That’s a pretty silly conclusion to draw, but I can’t think of any other point you could be trying to make, other than just linking to random graphs.
Um, actually it’s a very intelligent point to make. Exterior lighting correlates quite strongly with reduced crime of all sorts including violent life threatening crime. The is exactly why we have street lights. It’s not so you car doesn’t need headlights or so old aunt Sadie can leave the flashlight at home… There is some effect on auto / pedestrian accidents and auto / auto accidents too, but that’s smaller.
The secondary correlation, though, is that once a society has enough power that they can afford to light the large open street area, they certainly have enough to do the essentials like refrigerate food and medicine and run telephones to the ambulance service.
Like it or not, exterior lighting is a great indicator of affluence, and affluent societies are vastly safer and healthier than poor ones. The best thing you can do for humanity (and for the planet) is to get everyone on it to an advanced, western, affluent lifestyle as rapidly as possible.
A rich society sets aside giant nature preserves. A poor one cuts them down for food and fuel… and kills each other fighting over the last scraps.
Our city achieved a reduction of 0.3% over Earth Day, and an overall province wide reduction of 1.1%. This compares to a province wide reduction of 2% last year. The hydro company blamed the poor showing on “cooler weather than last year”.
Must be the global warming inversion we’re having….
I published a similar story earlier on American Thinker and found that New York also did not have any drop in electric usage. I could not find a graph for New York so I had to plot the data from their ISO.
The biggest conflict of interest: Obama’s involvement in Chicago Climate Exchange–the rest of the story – from the Canada Free Press:
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/9629
Richard Heg (01:16:51) : For me the image of a dark Africa makes me think of how hard it is for children to get an education when they have to work during the day and have no light to read by night.
This is exactly correct.
One of the big success stories of poverty eradication is in rural India. The model is to set up a micro power station (some are solar PV, some are Lister type Diesels running on plant oils – that also runs the seed crusher to get the plant oils…). This provide just enough electricity to run a couple of light bulbs and a satellite TV system. The village WAS tied to the sun cycle. Sundown, end of farm day, sleep. No time to learn or improve. Next day, up, plough, plant, harvest, cook, sleep. Repeat.
With the couple of light bulbs, the women indulge in craft work for making money (starting a virtuous circle of minor profit, micro lending, improved health, more capital stock – think rocket stove…) while the men get to see the ‘how to grow more crops with less work’ ag show on the TV and the kids get an education via the ‘school show’ on the TV. The intellectual capital of the village starts to rise exponentially.
The results are often spectacular.
There is an absolute and undeniable cause and effect between the arrival of even trivial amounts of electric power and the rise from grinding poverty toward modernity and prosperity.
Sidebar on plant oil Diesels: Before folks lament the feeding of food to engines, realize that the advantages outweigh the fuel consumed. The farmers get more total yield due to what they learn. They even, thanks to the Diesel powering a seed crusher, have excess oil left over.
Where before their human capital was spent grinding seeds by hand, they now have time and because the machinery is more efficient than hand grinding, they have excess oil not a shortage. The women often turn this oil into soap and start selling it; getting money they never had before. (And everyone gets cleaner and healthier) Some women use the (now readily available) soap to start a laundry business. That money lets them buy more tools and more advancement. Soon follows a sewing machine and a micro-scale clothing business. Rocket stoves cut the need for cooking wood / fuel. The pressed seed cake is used for fertilizer directly or fed to goats and the goat poo used for fertilizer improving the soil. (Eventually they learn to make ‘gobar gas’ fermenters and goat poo gas replaces wood at the cooking fuel of choice…). The preferred oil seeds come from legume trees that add nitrogen to the soil, improving it over time.
At the end of the day, less land is needed, more food is grown, everyone is happier, healthier, more educated, and more prosperous. Food shortages are eliminated (due to more goat meat, more cheese, more cooking oils, less soil degradation, better technique, etc.) Oh, and it’s “carbon neutral” 😎
This is a microcosm of the entire world. We need more technology and electricity, not less. To do otherwise is to begin a spiral decent into hell rather than the virtuous circle into modernity and prosperity.
This is not speculation, it is an existence proof.
O/T but recognizes UHI as an exploitable resource. hmmmmm
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/42160/title/Urban_Heat_Recycling_waste_heat
Can we see a graph of crime during earth hour? With all the lights out the boogies had a field day breaking into homes.
Dan Lee (03:20:28) : I think I dumped more carbon into the atmosphere in that one hour than I typically do in a whole week. I’ll have to do this more often
Oh gosh! I hadn’t even thought of that! I wonder how many “save the Earthers” were sitting in candle light dumping out 100 times the “pollution” as a compact fluorescent would make and being self congratulatory about it?!
I know that at least one of the “darker homes” on my walkabout looked like it had candle flickers from inside… I wonder, too, how many of them realize that modern candles are almost totally made from petroleum wax? (You can get a very nice stearic acid candle from Ikea that smells a bit like crayons and doesn’t smoke as much when you put it out. My preferred candles since they store better – don’t melt as easy; and burn more cleanly IMHO.)
In BC we had a dip of 1.1% during the Earth Hour… BUT IT WAS A HUGE SUCCESS!!!
You can have a car in any color you want, as long as that color is white.
> Ghost of Henry Ford.
Earth Hour was a resounding success — only in the minds of AGW True Believers and Mainstream Media. These clowns are so wrapped up in their fantasy delusion of righteous adulthood that they just can’t see the drool and spittle on their bibs as they adoringly feed each other strained peas.
I watched the News at 11! As the talking head solemnly pronounced the success of Earth Hour, a clip played showing the lights that were turned out; what I saw was a panoramic view of a fully illuminated city skyline.
A concrete example of cognitive dissonance on display for all to see.
Up here in the Great White North I observed that the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) was reporting live on the Earth Hour and even the Weather Channel had some poor soul outside reporting on the level of lighting or some such thing. I suppose the folks that produced these programs thought that our televisions would be the last things we would switch off in support of Earth Hour. I believe that all this just contributes to the evidence that, as a species, we are a faulty design with defects that lend themselves to self extermination.
Mark (06:20:41) : Ah, you forgot about those of us celebrating Human Achievement Hour at the same time! […] I figure a climate realist can outpower a climate sheep at a ratio of at least 40:1! Not fair really is it?
You know, you’ve given me an idea… For next “achievement hour” I’m going to fire up the arc welder and fabricate a new BBQ.
There’s nothing like a 250 AMP arc make you feel like you are achieving!
(Though I may need to check the mains breaker size… don’t know if I have enough 240V capacity to run a welder and the stove and the oven and the cloths drier and… at the same time…)
Anthony, and Russ Steele, all I can say is “wow.” And thank you!
A question I have is about the sudden dip and bounce back shown on the March 28 graph, at around 10:45 a.m. That is similar to what I was expecting to see at 8:30 p.m., if the Earth Hour had an effect.
Does anyone have an idea what caused the dip? Maybe Californians cannot tell time, and got the Earth Hour thing off by about 10 hours? It wouldn’t be turning off the lights, not at that time of day. Did the women all stop blowdrying their hair right about that time?
A couple of thoughts based on earlier comments, the first regarding turning off lights at night. Many lights will not be turned off due to security concerns, and liability concerns. For example, if a person were assaulted in a darkened parking structure because the landlord turned off the lights to celebrate Earth Hour, the landlord would be in great difficulty in defending a negligence or personal injury lawsuit.
Second, California just passed a new regulation aimed at inflating vehicle tires, as part of the AB 32 Global Warming Solutions Act. In this one, the service provider (oil changers, mechanics, smog testers) must measure tire pressure and adjust them. One can only hope that the testers do not let the air out of a hot tire, so it meets the pressure stated on the sidewall. When the tire cools down, the tire will then be under-inflated and therefore unsafe.
California is going to injure us all with these regulations (or worse)!
The recent ‘Earth Hour’ stunt was a propaganda victory. The hype was covered by all the major media in this country.
The fact that the overwhelming majority of people didn’t care and either ignored ‘Earth Hour’s or decided to celebrate ‘Human Achievement Day’ was also uniformly not reported by the same media.
Outside of the fleeting propaganda achieved, ‘Earth Hour’ was a complete failure.
Tom in South Jersey (06:47:44) : Along a similar thread, there was an interesting NY Times report on CFLs not performing as intended.
One of the problems is that you get about 10,000 on / off cycles if you are lucky then the ‘starter’ burns out. At 10 / day that’s 1000 days or less than 3 years and your savings go POOF! Those pretty charts with 10 year amortization only work if you cycle the bulb 2 or 3 times a day MAX. (And that’s part of why commercial buildings leave the lights on so much. The labor cost to replace the bulbs or pay for electricity make it far more economical to leave them on and get a long life out of them). Save the planet from mercury pollution and wasted CFBs: Leave them on all the time!
I would like to warn that I had one of these wonderful earth saving lights catch on fire recently. The base overheated, like fluorescent ballasts tend to do
This is the usual failure mode for fluorescent bulbs. The starter can’t get the bulb to start anymore so it stays “locked up” with the heater current running the bulb heater full tilt (ends glowing dull red) until something overheats and goes FUNT!
I have a PL-13 in my porch light and about every 5 years it does this. The base of the PL-13 lamp is burn your skin hot to touch, but the fixture seems to survive ( if a bit scorched…) Makes a loud buzzing when it’s doing it too (so I’m not so worried… I can hear when it’s doing this…)
It took hours of open windows on a freezing cold day to remove the stench from my home.
My formula for removing stench (tobacco or burned electronics or even that bright idea for a broiled meatloaf 😎 is simple: Alternate a mist of ammonia vapor with a mist of vinegar vapor at 20 minute intervals.
You can start and end with either one. I like to finish with ammonia since it dissipates well, some folks like vinegar since it smells like a Caesar salad 😉
Fine mist in the air. Wait 20 minutes. Air out if desired. Fine mist of other stuff. Wait 20 minutes. Repeat if needed.
Pretty much anything with a smell will react with either an acid or a base. The vapors will penetrate most fabrics and neutralize smells there too. Most finishes are fine with these common cleaners. All traces eventually evaporate (no solids left). In a pinch, you can to a tiny “neutralize” spray to get to zero odor a bit faster, though it’s tricky to get just enough ammonia to neutralize the vinegar in the air… or verse vicea
For burn smells I usually start with ammonia since most burn products are dry acids.
First developed out of desperation when stuck with a hotel room in DC with overstuffed furniture reeking of 40 years of accumulated back room deal cigar smoke et. al. Took 3 cycles, one with the door closed for an hour of each vapor, and direct dampening of the horsehair oversized chair, but the room became very livable as opposed to gagging.
(Based loosely on the military chemical warfare decontamination procedure but using vapors instead of liquid wash and using much more mild acid / base pair…)
I’m wondering how many homes and lives will be lost to fire due to these defective CFL bulbs.
And how much heath damage from the mercury.
I’m an early adopter of CFL bulbs (CFBs). My home is 90%+ CFLs. I’ve also (over 10 – 15 years now) had roughly 4 of them break the glass one way or another. I have no idea how much mercury this has added to my home, but the mercury vapor does not stay in the bulb when broken… I’m not paranoid about it (maybe I should be…) having grown up with amalgam fillings and mercury switches; but they are NOT the enviro-friendly thing folks think they are and there are places they MUST NOT be used (fridge, oven, photographic darkroom, automotive work light (rough handing lights), etc.) due to contamination or breakage issues.
I’m even not so comfortable using them in the kitchen overhead (and would never put one in the fume hood over the stove) but do so because I have a complete glass bowl surround of the light fixture. You do not want mercury in your food preparation area…
Also, FWIW, the recent crop of $1 and less CFBs from China have had a horrific failure rate. Often I’ve gotten just a month or two from them (and I’ve had several DOI or at first light FUNT.) I’ve temporarily started running off my stock of older CFLs and bought an inventory of Incandescent bulbs ‘just in case’ while I sort out who is still a reliable source for new bulbs. FWIW, I still have one very old GE circle light from about 15 years ago over the back patio. It was lit up for “achievement hour”. Built well, to say the least…
I have no need nor desire to send my money to China so they can send mercury bombs to me… (even though the glass didn’t break, the mercury is now a disposal issue.)
Earth Hour was a a publicity gimmick to do only ONE THING.
Allow the cynical gangsters. who pushed out the original concerned citizens, who now rule the environmental organizations, to establish yet another reason for more “fund-raising”.
The increased contributions, by individual foolish eco-loons, and moneys from heretofore charitable Foundations, will let them pay themselves even more money. It will protect their environmental organization-provided private jets and chauferred limousines of their every need.
They need those to travel to Bali or Rio or the Riviera, or some other place to meet with people from across the street and down the hall, to waste time attending some other environmental conference or other. Of course, they will fit in a little shopping and vacationing too.
[please tone down the language – “factual disagreement” is better choice – Anthony]
And it has massive funding from those in power.
It is just another tactic used against the non thinking, gut reaction members of the world to ‘justify’ the current grab for absolute power over us all.
Now, I am all for conserving, and I hate wasting anything.
Food, electricity, fuel, resources.
BRAIN CELLS . . .
But I am also against governments OUT OF CONTROL.
THAT is the real issue here.
REAL science shows we are actually in a cooling phase.
The planet isn’t static, it is always in a state of change.
Or, didn’t you notice the glaciers left us a few thousand years ago.
AGAIN . . .
Seems the planet has gone through HUNDREDS of hot/cold phases.
I expect it will continue to do so, all green intentions aside.
So, evidence shows that earth hour was a total bust, yet we hear from a great many it was a HUGE success.
I myself can only vouch for Lafayette, Indiana, but there was nothing here to indicate any real participation at all.
I personally know of no one who bought into this bs.
But think whatever makes you feel warm & fuzzy inside.
If you have already convinced yourself global warming is true and our leaders are trying to stop it, you are way past the point of being able to learn anyway.
Facts simply mean nothing in regards to how you wish to look upon the world.
John Galt . . .
from TOL?
JohnSmiles here
Bob (09:06:04) : Stephen–conservative Democrat is a non-sequitur. Did you vote for Obama?
Straying a bit … but … It isn’t really a non-sequitur in a historical context. While the present Democratic Party is essentially the People Socialist Party of old, it is also true that the present Republican Party is more ‘liberal’ than the Democrats of old. John Kennedy’s platform of economic actions would be deemed too conservative by many mainstream Republicans today. Yet…
We still have the Southern Blue Dog Democrats… My Texas Uncle is a registered Democrat. Has been for about 50 years. He makes Bush look like a bleeding heart liberal. (This is the one who is a retired prison guard / worker…). see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Dog_Democrats
So please remember that your Democrat brothers and sisters can be conservative at times, and just like AaahNold, our Republican Governator, Republicans can be RINOs (Republican In Name Only) leading a socialist charge…
So there is hope to take back the Democratic party for beer drinking pickup driving football watching fiscal conservatives. Maybe even as much as there is for doing the same with the Republicans …
Jason A. (00:07:42) :
“Richard Heg: so what, are you trying to say that leaving the lights on at night makes you live longer? That’s a pretty silly conclusion to draw, but I can’t think of any other point you could be trying to make, other than just linking to random graphs.
“Anyways, I seem to think that people who thought earth hour was about making any kind of significant impact in energy usage are missing the point by a mile. Anyone who thinks leaving the lights off for one hour a year is an energy solution needs to sit down and shut up while the grown ups talk. And I don’t think much more highly about those who thought that was the point of earth hour, even though they knew it wouldn’t ‘work’.
It was an educational/attention-getting exercise, and ‘8,000 articles’ seems to indicate success.”
OK, Mr. Grownup, thank you for putting all of us who think that “consensus science” is an oxymoron and who think that the promoters of “Earth Hour” are a bunch of watermelons (green on the outside; red on the inside) in our place. Now, while we sit down and shut up and listen to you talk, would you mind explaining to us why the facts on the ground are so at odds with what your models predict? Or perhaps you could explain how President Obama, whose only previous experience outside the legislature was being a community organizer, will do a much better job running GM than Rick Wagoner? Or why cap and trade will mean the largest wealth transfer in history?
Oh, that’s right, when you grownups speak it’s all about shouting down anyone who disagrees with you, not about honest debate. Sorry, I momentarily forgot.
/sarc off
[snip]
No use posting where what you say is edited out for stating the simple truth.
Reply: Believe in any conspiracies you like, Anthony is simply trying to maintain civility ~ charles the moderator
3×2 mentioned here a Guardian article whose author can’t wait to see a strictly rationed society full of deliberate limitations and obstacles. 3×2 called it communist.
Weell…it’s not exactly true. I would say, that the Green vision is much more misanthropic than the original commie approach.
At least since 70’s our (Czech) commie government would have gladly let us ordinary people consume more, if only our economy would have allow that! If there were shortages of electricity it wasn’t because they planned for it. If there were bananas available only before Christmas, it wasn’t because “keeping it local”, but because of shortage of convertible currency. We weren’t limited by ideology, but by it’s economical impact.
Nope, that wasn’t the point. The point was that societies that have access to cheap power tend to have longer life spans.
Anyways, I seem to think that people who thought earth hour was about making any kind of significant impact in energy usage are missing the point by a mile. Anyone who thinks leaving the lights off for one hour a year is an energy solution needs to sit down and shut up while the grown ups talk. And I don’t think much more highly about those who thought that was the point of earth hour, even though they knew it wouldn’t ‘work’.
Again, it’s clear that you’re the one missing the point of this post. Which is that people just didn’t participate. So all it did was generate more CO2 for a hyped up non-event.
Oops, the third para should have been in blockquotes… The second and fourth are mine.
Spathirin (04:08:53) :
I agree with jason. Humans don’t need to see in the dark. Why would we? It’s not like seeing in the dark is beneficial to our health. What, are we walking down stairs now? Are we living in places filled with poisonous night-active animals? No!
If there were no street lights – anywhere- there would be more crime and more road accidents according to many governments. That’s why so many freeways and other roads ar lit during the dark hoiurs.
Al Gore is now claiming — against photographic evidence posted on this site — that he turned his lights out for Earth Hour: click
I would, but my 10kw Propane generator would kick in, and I’d be forced to use the power. 😉
[snip]
[snip]
[snip]
[snip]
[snip]
John Thiel
REPLY: Obscenities don’t really do much to make points here. – Anthony
As anyone will tell you earth hour isn’t about saving electricity it’s about raising awareness. In that light could we all start a humanitarian hour? This would be like earth hour but instead of everyone getting together and drinking expensive wine and having a gourmet candle-lit picnics people would burn a cow pat to cook their dinner in a crowded hut and drink dirty water.
I hope you’re right, but the ability of the sheeple to meander about blindly with the wool over their eyes is really extraordinary. Here we have flooding amid ice dams in North Dakota blamed on ‘global warming’ by our disingenuous President, and no one says a word (except on blogs like this). We have the chief Alarmist ‘scientist’ demonstrating against a coal plant in Washington, DC, in a snowstorm, and no one says a word.
Two cold winters do not seem to have diminished the zeal of the ‘greens’ whatsoever, nor of the politicians who want to seize the ‘climate crisis’ to further nefarious agendas of their own, nor of the clueless media, who continue to create completely wrong-headed and phony stories about ice melting, seas rising, storms increasing, species vanishing, and ‘the Earth in crisis’. Are they completely dishonest, or insufferably stupid—or both?
It is indeed likely that if the current cooling continues for a few years, that reality will sink in, but how much damage can these zealots and aggrandizing fools do in the meantime?
/Mr Lynn
Roger Sowell (11:45:50) : A question I have is about the sudden dip and bounce back shown on the March 28 graph, at around 10:45 a.m.
Up on a Saturday, breakfast cooked and dishes in the washer, every one showered and ready, weekend party / play plans in hand, and out the door at 10am or so! Long pause while “mom” checks everyone’s out, lights off, stereos off… pours cup of coffee and kills the pot, kills the dishwasher for some peace and quiet and puts up feet for a break well deserved 😉
More or less matches my home pattern…
Does anyone have an idea what caused the dip? […] Did the women all stop blowdrying their hair right about that time?
Not the blowdrier…
Second, California just passed a new regulation aimed at inflating vehicle tires, as part of the AB 32 Global Warming Solutions Act. In this one, the service provider (oil changers, mechanics, smog testers) must measure tire pressure and adjust them. One can only hope that the testers do not let the air out of a hot tire, so it meets the pressure stated on the sidewall.
Oh Gawd! So now I’m going to have to explain to every single high school dropout at the mandatory smog station or service that I have 50 psi H rated special sized sport tires that DO NOT get the placard pressure off of the door pillar (28 psi) or they feel like flat sponges and that I really really want them at 40 psi where they perform perfectly and no I do not want them at 28 hot since that will be 23 or so cold and the sidewalls will be flat / overflexing and damaging my expensive tires… and I only put them at 50 psi cold when I want a brick–house ride with extreme performance…
Exactly how many non-tire service providers really understand the physics of tires and their proper tuning / pressure setting?… clearly the law makers did not. The placard on the car is for a tire size that is no longer made (25+ year old vehicles) and I’m sure the law does not let the service provider deviate from the placard by actually thinking… and realizing that a 175/80 bias ply or 185/75 SR tire is not run at the same pressure as a 205/70 or a 195/70 H or V tire.
So every time I go to a service provider (will that include car washes?) I need to allow 1/2 hour for my own personal tire pressure check and for my (always in the car kit) mini-air pump to put my tires back where I want them making a heck of a racket in the parking lot. Sigh… Wonder how many of my special metal valve stem caps will end up being replaced with generic black plastic when I’m not watching …
California is going to injure us all with these regulations
Too late, my Malox bill has already gone up 😎 But look on the bright side, since I’ll likely skip the car wash, oil changers, etc. and just do more myself to avoid the hassle or go to my local friend mechanic who has clue, think how much (of the newly made higher) sales tax the state won’t be collecting! (Tax beatings will continue until business morale improves…) They’ve already talked me out of ever buying a new car, now they’ve talked me out of going to ‘fast service’ places too. Eventually the death of 1000 cuts to the economy will be over and we can start to rebuild a sane economy in the state… What is California at, 10+% unemployment and rising?
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/11/csd-california-socialism-disorder/
Every day of the week power demand starts dropping off around 8pm. Nothing unusual about earth hour. Do you think they wanted to make sure earth hour fell on the downslope?
Here is a graph of the last 7 days of power consumption by the Bonneville Power Administration in the Pacific Northwest. It updates every 5 minutes.
http://www.transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx
I participated!
I turned on every light in the house. Then I went out on the patio, smoked a cigar and puffed out smoke and co2 and farted methane.
The most notorious environmentalists in history were the German Nazis. The Nazis ordered soldiers to plant more trees. They were the first Europeans to establish nature reserves and order the protection of hedgerows and other wildlife habitats. And they were horrified at the idea of hydroelectric dams on the Rhine. Adolf Hitler and other leading Nazis were vegetarian and they passed numerous laws on animal rights.
I REFUSE to be a Nazi! We already have the start of a facist government in the US with the ‘Man-Child’ in charge. Why do I call him the ‘Man-Child’? Because he physically has the body of a man but the brain capacity of a child,”You have more pudding then me!” “You need to share your pudding!” “It isn’t my fault!”
All the things a child would say.
Reply: Political events such as “Earth Hour” necessarily spawn political discussions. And even though the Nazi comments above may even be accurate, this moderator would prefer avoiding the chants of Nazis! Nazis! Fascists! Fascists! etc. and where those discussions would lead. I don’t know how to set this out as an objective rule for moderation, but I’m hoping you all get my rather vague and porous point ~ charles the moderator
Jason 07:42
It certainly did get attention. Now the AGW crowd and their fellow travelers look even sillier. Publicity is obviously not their forte. Maybe they should stick to long boring slide shows. BTW, everyone “got it” that it was just a symbol, except some of the AGWers. Theat’s the funny part.
Nice to see another load graph. Being an Australian we had to go through this nonsense before you guys. Same result.
Mind – there were MSM outlets touting a ‘billion people were going to turn off’, ‘50% of various states populations had switched their lights off’ etc
As one other blogger put it : “Its now Global Yawning’ see :http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/its_now_global_yawning/#commentsmore
Hmm : graphs http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/now_thats_a_real_earth_hour_or_two/#commentsmore
Roger Sowell (11:45:50) :
Thank you for your understanding of what I said,
Hope that others will take heed!
One last thing I forgot to say is that I have my new tires installed using nitrogen instead of regular air… so any tinkering around with my tires makes me mad!
letting out my nitrogen and then replacing it with air is just stupid!
**Nuclear fusion is coming sooner than most people realize.
If that is true, this entire flap is moot.**
Unfortunately not. It takes very little goading to provoke an extremist environmentalist (not the only kind of environmentalist on the planet, but the only ones you seem to hear from these days) into telling you that there would be NOTHING WORSE for the planet than abundant, clean and inexpensive energy. Give it a try, you’ll see.
The point of Earth Hour was to vote by turning off your lights. Each vote counted. I voted. Did you?
>Can someone please help me out here:
>If an electric power company normally uses 10 tons of coal during a >particular time period on a particular day, and they anticipate no changes in >demand; then the power company will still use 10 tons of coal even if >everyone turns off every single electrical device. Where is the reduction in >CO2. (?) How long does it take a power company to adjust fuel usage to >demand (downwards)?
No, the vast majority of coal fired coal plant use pulverized fuel, which allows for fairly quick response times. It takes longer for the utility to send the load change dispatch (tell the plant to reduce load) than it does to make the load change. A typical coal fired plant can ramp output up/down by 5 or 6 megawatts per minute. All bets are off with a nuke plant however, *if* they do a load change (not likely), that requires pre-planning.
Interesting to note, in Ontario, Canada, the only units that shed load during “earth hour” were hydro-electric….all the CO2 producing natural gas plants (about 1000MW online at the time) stayed up.
>Or am I just missing something (probably). Wouldn’t it make more sense to >ask the power generating companies to reduce power by some % for some >length of time so we all get a good dose of the effect of reduced >consumption and feel good about reduced CO2? Oh wait, that will happen >enough this coming summer I guess, with rolling blackouts.
Power companies produce exactly the amount of power that is required at any given moment. This is how the frequency is maintained. Too little generation, and the grid frequency goes down, too much and the frequency goes up. It’s not negotiable 🙂 If a power company was to decide to just reduce load by some %, *all* the lights go out as all the generators start tripping offline….like the North American wide blackout a few years ago.
E.M.Smith, re tire pressures and adjusting them
The regulation does not apply to car-washes, but does apply to oil changers, mechanics, and smog-checkers.
Also, the tire-checkers and adjusters are to read the tire’s sidewall for the proper inflation pressure. What is not clear is how they are to adjust the pressure on a hot tire.
If anyone is interested in this 100-plus page document (produced at tax-payer expense), it may be found at
http://www.arb.ca.gov/regact/2009/tirepres09/tireisor.pdf
“Bogeymen of the C02 hoax losing ground
By Dr. Tim Ball
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. Eric Hoffer
James Hansen, head of NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS), and Andrew Weaver, lead author of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Reports, made statements clearly designed to frighten people.
Both men are politically active in climate change and at the forefront of the attempt to convince the world that CO2 is a problem. Their remarks are intended to scare people by threatening impending doom – nothing new – except there is increasing urgency and fear because their message is failing. As Andrew Weaver summarized, ”All those fossil fuel emissions need to be eliminated. And we must do so quickly if we are to have any chance of stabilizing the climate and maintaining human civilization as we know it.”
Hansen increases urgency for action claiming we are on the verge of a tipping point, defined as follows. “Tipping points can occur during climate change when the climate reaches a state such that strong amplifying feedbacks are activated by only moderate additional warming.”
We’re reaching a tipping point, but it’s not the one Hansen anticipates.”
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/9746
Re: Julian Gall (23:37:57) :
“I think this post misses the point. Earth Hour wasn’t about saving energy, it was a symbolic act to generate publicity and get people talking about it. This it has obviously done :)”
Nothing like moving the goal posts when the experiment fails.
Re: AlexB (13:57:11) :
“…people would burn a cow pat to cook their dinner in a crowded hut and drink dirty water.”
I’d vote we all go round to Al Gore’s palace, camp outside and all sit around in crowded huts, burning cow pat fires, drinking dirty water and set up camp latrines in his back yard (very eco-friendly don’t you know) and see if he likes our low-energy and eco-friendly way of living. Hell, I’d even welcome him outside for a road-kill burger (hey its going to waste otherwise) and some recycled urine…
Charles the moderator wrote:
Reply: Political events such as “Earth Hour” necessarily spawn political discussions. And even though the Nazi comments above may even be accurate, this moderator would prefer avoiding the chants of Nazis! Nazis! Fascists! Fascists! etc. and where those discussions would lead. I don’t know how to set this out as an objective rule for moderation, but I’m hoping you all get my rather vague and porous point ~ charles the moderator
Charles, “I feel your pain”! Decorum in debate is essential and we don’t want to lower ourselves to a personal, ad hominem level. Many people died because of Hitler’s Germany and we don’t want to minimize those events.
A bit OT:
I am listening to President Obama on the radio right now talking about his firing of GMs CEO this weekend. The definiition of Economic Fascism is private ownership of the means of production with the government having veto authority over policy and staffing decisions of the corportation(paraphrased). Obama is utilizing his veto power over GMs board of directors by canning the CEO. What should we call this type of government/private sector relationship?
I am getting nervous!!!
I did the same but found a different graph. I compared last Sat. to the previous Sat. also. Mine shows a marked increase in usage during the Earth Hour period.
Sorry for the OT but…
HUH?
The life expectancy map is outdated. It says that the life expectancy of Spain is between 77.5 to 80 years and the actual CIA factbook says it is over 80.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sp.html
Yeah man, we Californians really had an impact. More of our hydroelectric, nuclear and wind powered juice (especially true Saturday night) ended up going unused! Great impact on GHG emissions! YAHHHHHH MAHHHHHN! Oh, WOW, man.
I was at work during “Earth Hour”, running megawatts of computer toys :).
At about 8:45, I went out for a dinner break, and drove up and down the local “strip” spotting businesses who went dark, and making mental notes not to do business with them in the future for being dumb enought to fall for this tokenist crap. There were surprisingly FEW “dark” businesses… at 8:45 Saturday night, even in Tallahassee– were they KIDDING? … so even my boycott isn’t going to be a very onorous chore. Most of the places that went dark were like tofu-burger joints, so I probably wouldn’t have gone there in any case. I grabbed a Big Mac and went back into the computer room at 9:15 and kept those computers churning out the wattage.
So, yup… I’m “doing something about the environment” 🙂
I support the choice of a consumer to do as they wish in response to some of the posts above. While I’m envirnmentally inclined, living in the dark, eating locally grown (but only in the summer as i live in the north) veggies and forgoing all meat becasue someone has told me to just doesn’t fit my rights as a citizen of this country. Such as it is…..slowly going, going, going……
Every light in or on my home was lit as well as was most of my neighbors.
“This it has obviously done :)”
I was especially heartened by tyhe news out of Tennessee.
Um, actually it’s a very intelligent point to make. Exterior lighting correlates quite strongly with reduced crime of all sorts including violent life threatening crime. The is exactly why we have street lights. It’s not so you car doesn’t need headlights or so old aunt Sadie can leave the flashlight at home… There is some effect on auto / pedestrian accidents and auto / auto accidents too, but that’s smaller.
That is exactly what the power companies want you to believe.
It’s wrong. The ‘change’ in lighting is the only thing that reduces criminal activities. Put up new lighting, and it works for a while. Then, it’s back to business as usual. And there isn’t enough fossil fuels to continue down that path of lighting up the world.
The best outdoor lighting for security issues is motion-sensor activated.
There is also a growing problem of glare. It is causing increased pedestrians being struck by cars. Newer models have 4 lights, and lights strong enough to appear sunlike. At times near sunset, people are walking out into traffic thinking the light they see is the setting sun. It’s deadly.
Glare problem #2: When too much lighting is added in one spot, it reduces visibility in the lesser lit areas that used to be well-lit. Cascading like waves, more lighting is piled on. More demand on the grid. The aging grid.
Utility companies could care less if a whole city is plunged into darkness.
The lessons from S. Africa are a stark reminder of the hardwired problem.
Constant rolling blackouts, because too much of the cities are hardwired.
Nobody is brave enough to address the problem, even though life goes on during blackouts. Yes, the cars do just fine, and so do the people walking about. Sorry about the food in the fridge.
So I take it someone won’t be visiting Vegas or Times Square. They both turned it all off. Or the UK, where the rural counties have all cut back on the lavish outdoor lighting.
You can live without the extravagnza lighting.
Try that with your refrigerator or your hot water heater.
You know, the things that really make life better?
I can see a day coming when we will see residents taking matters into their own hands, reducing the demand on the grid by force.
Wouldn’t it be better to do it sanely, over time?
Power plants boil water to make steam. If demand falls they just vent the excess steam. Some plants are running in spinning standby for sudden changes in demand. Think about it. It takes some time to get the plant up to “full steam” just like the boilers on battle ships.
That’s very true, unfortunately. I would have expected California’s electrical consumption to have decreased… I guess not!
John in NZ (07:51:37) :
OT:
The Caitlin arctic survey don’t appear to have made a post since 10.40 am Saturday 28 March. It is now day 30.
I suspect if they are in trouble the first news will be no news.
Their biotelemetry is at last streaming, although their heart, respiratory rates and core temperatures do appear to fluctuate rather worryingly at times. Some text has just been posted also:
“Latest Update [30 March 2009]
The current terrain is an unpredictable mix of open expanses, deep fissures and dynamic rubble fields which is making it very difficult for the team to get into a steady walking rhythm. The ice in the area they are crossing is very active and the team need to be alert to sudden changes at all times, as Ann found out when she sat down on a pressure ridge for a break in the middle of the day, only for the ice to suddenly start breaking up underneath her. Needless to say she cut her tea break short and moved on rather quickly.
Despite the challenging conditions, the team have proved they have now well and truly found their sea-legs and covered 13km.”
So considering the problems of wet sleeping bags and frostbite, I think they have done pretty well, as they still appear to be alive, and have only another 788km of polar bear dodging to go. I do have symapthy for them; if only because they are carrying on the great British tradition of totally daft and dangerous expeditions. The longer this goes on, the more I am reminded of the Michael Palin’s Ripping Yarns story, ‘Across the Andes by Frog’.
> Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am a skeptic – not an idiot. We need to tamper this down. I admit I turned on all the lights in my house for earth hour, but then I shut them all off later on. This is because I have been using energy savings devices for years and being human tend to hate what Al Gore has done to what I believe is a reasonable attitude. That attitude is simply stated as “Be frugal”. I don’t believe in AGW but just in case I am wrong
OT
Gavid at RC spread the AGW=more C5 Hurricanes nonsense.
Left wing radio talk show host Nancy Skinner earlier today said that AGW is heating up the oceans and causing more category 5 Hurricanes.
She must get that nonsense from misrepresenters like Gavin Schimdt
Gavin Schmidt
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/03/a-potentially-useful-book-lies-damn-lies-science/
Posted
“We’ve been told that AGW will lead to more frequent & destructive hurricanes.”
Gavin response.
[Response: It may well do. The magnitude of such an effect is still difficult to discern. – gavin]
“may well do”?
I may well win the lottery too.
This is science?
Gavin A. Schmidt is a central figure in the IPCC as a climatologist and climate modeller at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).
Gavin Schmidt is misrepresenting IPCC science.
“The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record.”
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_policy_general/000318chris_landsea_leaves.html
In Canada the Globe and Mail, the AGW mouthpiece newspaper has yet to published one statistical result about Earth Hour in Canada… instead it is easier to ask the readers to show their pictures, tell their stories etc… and of course it has no statistical value.
Watch out. Sydney where the “Earth Hour ” started will have a rolling black out for a long period after one of the main transmission lines failed ysterday. As the utility company reports, it may take months to repair the failed line leaving Sydney with no back up, making the load balancing difficult. That is the technical point. Wait until the Public Relations boys come with a good cover up. They could come up with the rolling and permanent earth hour. That will alsosave the face of the New South Wales government who has busted almost all of New South Wales infrastructure from Railway, roads, water and electricity.
I got an idea, lets not do Xmas this year. No Xmas lights, and shut off all the other lights on Xmas Eve so Santa can’t navigate and dump us all those toys he made in China. Obviously he had to move his production since the North Pole melted and his factory is underwater now.
Just tell the kiddies Santas production will turn Earth into a Green Hell and is no longer welcome. Toys and Xmas lights kill, as do the Xmas trees carbon. I mean, they are already teaching kids in school the AGW alarmist religion that preaches man is a sinner against Gaia and if we don’t change our habits we are all going to live in a Green Hell. This is just the next step.
And for those promoting eco-terrorism like Hansen, may they go to a Green Hell with Santa, or GITMO. Really, enough already.
Roger,
It is funny and sad that the government does not have the science right to be able to properly “adjust the pressure on a hot tire.” But they DO know how to adjust the earth’s thermostat by controlling CO2.
The clowns have taken over the circus.
Mike
I’ve been an energy conserver my whole life. At work, I’m the one who turns the lights out and only turns them back on if I hear someone yell in the dark.
But on this Earth Hour thing, I sense, and I could be wrong, that it is tied to the Catastrophic Anthropogenic CO2 Induced Global Warming (aka Climate Change) propaganda campaign and I don’t like being a pawn in their game.
I did turn a few extra lights on, but I suppose I could have gone full out and turned on my table saw, planer, and dust collector, but I was too busy blogging. I guess I’m just lazy.
FWIW, we had some friends over to watch a DVD movie, a 1946 musical about “The Harvey Girls,” which my friend Guy and I hoped would have some good ATSF train shots in it. We were disappointed, but the movie was fun, if dated, nonetheless. I had intended to turn on all the lights for ‘Earth Hour’, but completely forgot. So much for my symbolic gesture.
When they made the film, they actually bought a period 4-4-0 locomotive and three coaches in Oregon or somewhere, and trucked them down to California. The loco made a satisfyingly large cloud of very black smoke. I expect these days the Air Quality Board would have forbidden that.
/Mr Lynn
if you go to http://oasis.caiso.com/ and then look up the system loads for 3/28/09, they omitted the data for the earth hour.
@Mike Bryant (18:26:10) :
Mike, that is about the best summation I have heard on this entire issue. Can I quote you on that?
I vote for Mike’s comment as the quote of the week.
Btw…there is some material in that Tire Pressure regulation on internal tire temperatures and pressures. The hottest data point was about 107 degrees F. As an experiment, I felt the sidewall of a rear tire on my car after my 30 minute commute today. The tire felt mildly warm to the touch, definitely hotter than 100 degrees. Perhaps 110, maybe 120? This was in very mild weather today, not even 70 degrees F. Probably 65 degrees F, sunny, no rain. I remember tires being much, much hotter when I worked in a tire lane back in the 1970’s. We had to let a car sit for a few hours before putting it on the rack to remove the tires. That was in Houston (TX) in the summer, with ambient temperatures over 90 F.
Lots of good posts here tonight. Lots of new posters. Keep spreading the word to all your friends & make them regular visitors as well.
No surprises here in the graphs – simple fact is that when push comes to shove, almost no one really believes this is a problem worth sacrificing their personal well being & comfort for. And for politicians, since it is their business to get re-elected, they will fall in line with the populous when push comes to shove. Democracy can be a beautiful thing! …. unless your are Mr Hansen … then it isn’t working correctly – his statement ties seamlessly to the graphs & he knows it, thus the desperation among his crowd.
As much teenage son would say …. Sucks to be you! LOL
Great post Anthony. I turned all my lights on to try and flatten the curve but it was cold in Chicago and my heat just ran less. Oh well.
I’m an energy conserver because I am a mizer and my wife is a “turn off the light” screamer. I loathe having to pay for streetlights I don’t want or need. I know they are subsidized by hidden rates in the residential. The workers at the power plant will earn the same pay whether or not the grid is loaded to the gills. At least some jobs are safe.
Most night crime occurs under the glare of streetlights. Why? Because everyone else assumes somebody is watching. The robber doesn’t need a flashlight any more. The mugger hides in the shadows as the unassuming walk up to their front door with thier eyes caught in the glare of their front porch light.
We don’t need no stinking AGW Clap & Tirade All-Day-Stupid models.
We just need to quit doing stupid things and use the energy we really need in more efficient ways.
Robert Bateman:
There are unintended meanings in your description of your wife. I need to go to the hospital now and get some stitches put in my tongue.
@Mr.. Lynn,
Actually, making movies with an air polluter is allowed. But only with a permit! No hypocrisy in the government, as the movie industry must be given priority. Some pigs being more equal, and all. Movie makers can set off smoke bombs, propane explosions, fill the air with dust, run wood-burning trains, whatever the script calls for. But don’t try that with your car!
@wes, and others, to see a day in California where there WAS a dip in power demand, check out http://www.oasis.caiso.com, and select 09/03/2007 for the date. (maybe somebody can graph this?)
I found you when you were mentioned on Drudge.
Today when you were mentioned on Rush-I knew a new day had dawned.
Gongrats Anthony! You have made the big leagues. I loved you much. I will miss you. Enjoy your Stardom-We will always remember you for what you were… XXXOOO.
Good Luck-God Bless and Give ‘Em HECK!
I made sure to go around and turn off most of the lights 🙂 Too bad it wasn’t much of a success in CA.
Doesn’t California ISO measure demand by electric utilities for electricity? In which case their demand would be pretty constant unless they were told to have less transmission capacity between 8:30 and 9:30 Sat on the theory that Earth Hour was going to work (which would have been pretty bad instruction to work under–thank goodness the policy makers aren’t that stupid). Anyway, that makes the above chart somewhat irrelevant. You could freeze electricity usage throughout CA to basically 0 and not necessarily change the chart.
I took a look at some of the other Oasis information, and it suggests that end-user demand did have a small, but noticeable blip down between 8:30-9:30. In particular, Final ancillary procurement results for 3/28. Fair warning, haven’t done the maths on this data, and its a very volatile series, so it’s not a guaranteed conclusion.
http://oasis.caiso.com/
(java app–hit “ancillary” in the top tab, select “final procurement results” under the HA column, change the date to 3/28; compare to other dates at your will)
HE17 183.79
HE18 223.42
HE19 231.00
HE20 171.00
HE21 167.10
HE22 181.67
Total Self-Provided
HE17 182
HE18 183
HE19 183
HE20 183
HE21 183
HE22 183
Total MW
HE17 365.79
HE18 406.42
HE19 414.00
HE20 354.00
HE21 350.10
HE22 364.47
HE20-21 has the 8:30-9:30 span in it.
At least it’s doing something in Canada and the Phillipines. Not that it’s the actual MW impact that was the point anyway.
http://www.mississauganews.com/article/25553
http://www.bworldonline.com/BW033009/content.php?id=071
Though there’s also a lot of news agencies reporting a small sequential drop from 730-830 to 830-930pm, which the above charts make look meaningless. You definitely have to compare to similar times with similar temperatures (Chicago reported something like a 7% reduction on that metric last year).
Some of us were actively protesting the whole stupid concept of Earth Hour. I am sorry but my lightbulb use is not going to make a dent in the climate! So I deliberately kept mine on because I am not going to let some lunatic environmentalist tell me that the Earth is dying because I don’t use the brand of lightbulbs they want me to! Global warming is a global hoax and shame on anyone who continues to propagate it!
Yeah, i’ve been thinking, it’s just a moment that we celebrate the earth day..
We need to do that every time. In Indonesia, where the power is one of expensive thing, the Company of National Power make a advertisement to always keep turn off just two of useless lightbulb at home, from 19.00 to 22.00.
It goals to reduce the burden peak of using the power…
So, turn of the lightbulb at day actually not a new act on Indonesia..
Anyway, in Jakarta, five iconic city, turn off the light.
The Earth hour weeze is a clever bit of propaganda, all you have to do is enlist the managers of a few famous tourist spots – Eiffel tower, Pyramids of Giza etc to publicly join in and duly get photographed blackened out (photo shop can help here 🙂 ) and Hey presto! More publicty for said tourist attractions and a bogus claim that this represents whole cities taking part.
I was very amused by all the #earthhour tweets during Earth Hour on Twitter. All those, may I please say, sanctimonious participants congratulating each other for their observance, but using a medium that requires cellphone towers, internet servers, and electricity. Funny stuff, indeed.
I’m surprised with all the shrieking about banning black cars, nobody has bother to point out that that “issue” is just a hoax fabricated by those opposed to environmental conservation. http://www.snopes.com/politics/traffic/darkcars.asp
Secondly, the point of Earth Hour was to raise awareness and generate discussion. the fact that there was a noticeable power decrease in many areas was just a bonus. Based on the fact that even on only this one blog there are 182 comments about it, I’d say it’s was and is a raging success.
Based on the fact that even on only this one blog there are 182 comments about it, I’d say it’s was and is a raging success.
Right, dolphin. You just keep telling yourself that.
The cognitive dissonance being displayed by you people is truly impressive, and a testament to your “will to believe”. But, it seems to have reached a tipping point level.
Living in a world of make-believe only works for so long, before it all comes crashing down.
Right Bruce, your comment was so fact-filled and so carefully refuted everything thing I’ve said that I’ve completely changed my view and now think we can trash our planet and expect it to continue to support us.
Sorry, that was sarcasm. I’ve seen first hand how polluting our environment damages the life that calls it home. You simply stating that it’s all “make-believe” and expecting that I’ll take it as fact just isn’t as strong of evidence as real life experience.
Here’s the thing about putting together an argument. You have to actually refute what the other side is saying. You can’t simply declare it false and walk away. if you’ll notice in my comment I cited a specific source to refute the black car ban nonsense, and then offered anecdotal evidence to support the claim that Earth Hour was successful in it’s stated mission. Granted, 182 comments on a single blog post is hardly worldwide coverage, but I could link to any number of media outlets discussing it, if that’d make you feel better. it’s called backing your assertions with evidence. You may want to try it sometime.
I’d say it’s was and is a raging success.
Half right.
EPIC FAIL
I’ve seen first hand how polluting our environment damages the life that calls it home. Yeah, dolphin, good straw man there, seeing as how we’re all for “polluting our environment” here.
Sorry, dolphin, but you’ll have to do better than straw men arguments here.
You seem to be basing your “evidence” of success for this farce called “Earth Hour” on the number of comments on it, which is patently absurd. When you try to back your arguments by “evidence” simply of your own choosing, and which are nonsensical, you actually weaken your own argument. It’s called logic, dolphin. You might want to try it sometime.
Thank you Bruce for another comment that essentially says nothing.
Let’s try using some of the logic that you demand I use, yet refuse to use yourself. The purpose of Earth Hour was to generate discussion, therefore logically, the amount of discussion generated by Earth Hour is an appropriate (perhaps the only appropriate) measure of it’s success.
Instead of just stating that I’m illogical or nonsensical, why not try actually backing your assertions with some kind of facts? Is it truly absurd to judge success of an event on the degree of accomplishment of the event’s stated goals? I don’t think so, but since you do, perhaps you’d like to explain why and by what measure other than the stated goals success should be judged. or are you suggesting that Earth Hour in fact failed to generate any discussion or media attention? I find that assertion laughable on it’s face (and more than a bit ironic since you’re making the claim in a discussion about Earth Hour, but I’d be interested in hearing why you think that way. But that’s really the key… I’d like to know WHY you feel the way you do, not just that you do feel that way. You’ve spent alot of time talking about how I’m absurd, nonsensical, weak, illogical, cognitively dissonant, and living in a world of make-believe, but thus far you have spent any time explaining why?
I’m not out to change your opinion. I know you’ll forever think I’m an utter moron, and frankly that’s fine with me. I don’t try to reduce my impact on the environment for you. I do it because it’s what I want to do. All I’m asking is if you’re going to publicly attack me for trying to take small steps where I can to be earth conscious that you at least pretend to have a reason for it.
well, i guess “success” depends on frame of reference….
Environmentalists say Earth Hour was a great success
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/41882/113/
I don’t see why we have to be trapped between liberal-v-conservative or green-v-anti-green. Environmental concerns can, if we take the right approach, make the economy stronger, put more dollars in pockets through efficiency savings, and help us stop funding oil barons who hate us.
The value of Earth Hour was to habituate people to energy sensitivity. The notion that it would make a difference in actual energy use was overblown, I agree.
Environmentalism is a fundamentally sound and ethical perspective, and global warming as a result of man-made carbon emissions is well established. The hollow results of Earth Hour, or of too many other symbolic gestures that don’t get at the problem, hurt more than help.
The solutions that can help environmentally, strategically, and economically are clear. A better grid will improve energy efficiency, meaning less coal burned and lower per-unit energy costs for everyone. Yeah yeah, infrastructure costs money, but so did the interstate system — anyone think that was a bad idea? Renewable and clean sources of energy, for which labor is required in the US, are also good ideas. Shifting off of oil and diesel to electric and natural gas (along with efficiency improvements like hybrid tech) for vehicle and truck energy will reduce our dependence on foreign oil while still leaving us with a reliable energy supply that uses established technology. Shifting community design to put people closer to school, work, and commercial centers lets us have all we want while saving time and gas, as well as cutting traffic. Finally, simple, cheap improvements like smart thermostats and added insulation can cut carbon emissions dramatically and pay for themselves through savings.
It’s win win win, all around, if we do it right. You don’t have to be a hippie to see it.
I think we got this all wrong. I remember the Earth Concerts or whatever they were called that produced a huge carbon footprint and no lasting effect whatsoever. I am sure all the talk about Earth Hour in the news causes more energy consumption than the actual thing saved.
Switch something off for one hour and than party as usual is not the solution. We need to change our attitude and the way we do business.
dolphin (09:01:09)
The purpose of Earth Hour was to generate discussion, therefore logically, the amount of discussion generated by Earth Hour is an appropriate (perhaps the only appropriate) measure of it’s success.
The purpose of Earth Hour was to generate discussion about Earth Hour, mostly about how ridiculous it was? OK, if you say so.
I don’t try to reduce my impact on the environment for you. I do it because it’s what I want to do. …trying to take small steps where I can to be earth conscious
Thank you dolphin, for a double-dose of red herrings this time (nice to change things up, eh?). What you do (or think you do) “for the environment”, or to be “earth conscious”, and why has no bearing on the discussion of the “success” of the Earth Hour” farce. This is difficult for you to see, though, logic obviously not being a strong point for you.
No one claimed Earth Hour would save the world, or even have a meaningful impact on climate or energy usage. It’s symbolic, a first step for awareness, and to demonstrate how easy it is to do some simple things. That’s actually the point. If one person turns off one light it does not impact the climate. But if it becomes a greater matter of social consciousness, turning off unnecessary lights can have a very significant impact, still just the beginning though. Criticizing people who have a conscious and want to help do the right thing is cynical and nonconstructive. It’s like mocking someone for throwing their popcorn bag away in a movie theater. It’s better to mock those who contribute to the problem out of cynical antisocial self-interest, even better to educate rather than mock, and even better to lead by example. It’s very small, only symbolic, but it’s something, even if only an expression of how much some portion of the population care about our world. The real potential for positive change can come only through public policy, but that requires awareness and widespread support. Small steps like Earth Day are helping to bring about that support. If you want to measure statistics, don’t measure energy usage, take polls of what percentage of the public is aware that excess energy use is detrimental, and would support public policy measures to reduce fossil fuel dependence and develop cleaner energy sources. Clearly, those statistics are gradually rising.
John: 11:44
The problem is that people, such as you cannot distinguish between education and indoctrination.
John, (11:44:16)
Regarding changing to “cleaner energy sources.” While you are about that, be sure to ask the public, and meaure their responses, to how much additional money they are willing to pay for those “cleaner energy sources.”
I ask you to do this because coal and natural gas-based power are the cheapest things around. Hydroelectric has almost no room for increase, so it is not an option. Everything else will increase prices, especially nuclear power.
Be sure to ask poor people about how much they are willing to pay to enjoy the good feeling of being green, as they will be impacted the hardest. Also ask senior citizens, and others on fixed or limited incomes.
For references, please have a look here:
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/ab-32-hits-poor-hardest.html
and here for the Nuclear Death Spiral, that adversely impacts the poor:
http://energyguysmusings.blogspot.com/2009/02/more-nuclear-nuttiness-and-nuclear.html
and here for costs of electricity from nuclear power plants ($0.25 to $0.30 per kwh):
http://energyguysmusings.blogspot.com/2009/02/nuclear-power-costs-2008.html
so what did you guys gain by turning on all your lights on earth hour? was there a goal? were you trying to stick it to all the green people(or hippies… with that good ol’ logic yours)? or just show how little of a life people can have when they try and refute logic. this goes for you too bruce!
bruce youre just being a d-bag.. in all honesty. the fact that you use an extended vernacular to try and make yourself sound more intelligent is extremely transparent. youre not smart dude…. sorry! 🙁
i actually do things to make as little of an impact as possible. im using a ne mac book right now just to get that out of the way. and i think this might be a good time to bring up.. NO ONES SAYING YOU HAVE TO HAVE NO IMPACT AT ALL.. people with REAL educations tend to be a little less black-and-white than that. its just good practice, especially in showing appreciation for your life, to try and limit little things at first and start finding new ways that suit your lifestyle. you can make a big impact that way. im vegan, i ride my bike(yeah i own 2 cars that i drive when i need to), i recycle and dont use materials that cant be composted and i turn off lights when i dont need em on.. not very hard. it just takes not being selfish.. but thats very hard for conservatives i know.
andrew (16:39)
Your selfless attitude of “having as little an impact as possible” to negate your sins against the planet has a long and mature history.
Thank you for turning ON the lights for Light UP the Earth Happy Hour on Saturday March 28, 2009 8:30-9:30PM and thank you for relaying the NCWatch report and data review — so Rush could shine the Light of Truth and give it all BRILLIANT MegaWatt commentary! Would also love to see some updated Lights ON satellite photos of the USA-Worldwide during that Happy Hour ! The tomb lights were shut off and dark in Egypt so don’t be surprised when some very haunted reports start to surface from the lights-off crowd ! But they asked for it !
Jeez
oh yeah dude, i do that regularly.. totally falls in line with what i said.
“NO ONES SAYING YOU HAVE TO HAVE NO IMPACT AT ALL.. people with REAL educations tend to be a little less black-and-white than that.” i think its about being practical.. not chosing one side or the other. lol i live comfortably not excesively.. i think thats the point i was trying to make.
There’s a “y” on that Name for the preceding entry — pls “modify” / correct it !
Just wanted to point out that you are incorrect on saying it was the same. The levels are completely different. At 9pm on Saturday it was at 26000 megawatts, on the same time Sunday it was at 27000 megawatts. The only way to tell if it worked is not to compare two separate days, but the previous Saturdays.
As Jeez (11:51:12) suggests, this is a product of indoctrination. Your assumption is flawed. Repeat after me:
EXCESS ENERGY USE IS NOT DETRIMENTAL, UNLESS YOU CAN’T AFFORD IT.
CHEAP, ABUNDANT ENERGY IS ESSENTIAL FOR CONTINUED GROWTH AND PROSPERITY, NOT ONLY FOR THE UNITED STATES, BUT FOR THE ENTIRE WORLD.
FOSSIL FUELS AND CO2 ARE GOOD FOR PLANTS, GOOD FOR THE EARTH, AND GOOD FOR YOU. AND THEY ARE CHEAP AND ABUNDANT.
So use as much as you can afford. Yes, we in the USA should stop using Islamist oil, but there is plenty of oil and other fuels (like natural gas) we can substitute for that.
Now you’ve been educated, not indoctrinated. Go forth and spread the true word.
/Mr Lynn
aheaton1:
I took a look at your blog. Apparently you own a rather nice dog. I’m sure you don’t mind that someone (probably several people) in the world are starving so that you can have your companion.
jeez..
im sure there are many people in the world that are so hungry that they would actually eat the food i feed my dog. however, im sure they would prefer the grain and fresh water that is wasted in excess to produce the live cattle(beef, pork, chicken etc) that im sure you eat and most likely in excess. so how again are they starving because of my dog? his food is vegitarian btw.. and yeah you can see how healthy he is in the video.
he’s very nice tho.. thank you 🙂
aheaton1 (14:03)
Food shortages are caused by economics, not by current lack of production. You have more money to buy the Calories for your dog than other less fortunate people. Those who eat meat have more money to buy Calories for meat production than the less fortunate. Thus, your spending money for Calories for your dog is raising the price of food for those less fortunate.
People who brag about their less impactful lifestyles tend to be hypocrites, and I have little patience for hypocrites. How far was that drive to the lake? Why do you have two cars? Are you using electricity from the grid? So your dog is vegetarian, how about you?
I’ll take you more seriously when you remove yourself from the grid and communicate exclusively through the Windernet.
I’ll stop now, because posters are not supposed to attack other posters on this site, but little gets under my skin faster than some upper middle class braggart professing their sustainable lifestyle.
You have to compare it to other Saturdays.
i guess you never understood what i meant when i said
“NO ONES SAYING YOU HAVE TO HAVE NO IMPACT AT ALL.. people with REAL educations tend to be a little less black-and-white than that.”
And in fact i repeated that once before. its funny how you use my hypocricy to fuel your argument when the point i made before clearly states im not perfect. yeah i live in laguna niguel, ca. parks are very abundant in the area i think there are 3 large ones within walking distance of my house and countless neighborhood parks.. not to mention the beach.. so i dont drive to go to parks for one.
THE WHOLE POINT and i will reiterate… yet again is to do what you can practically. AND BTW! food is in shortage due to drout and lack of production in places like india and china. in the US its caused by a various of reasons.. not dog food. i mean people can justify anything with talking about how angry someone or something makes them. although arguing that way only shows a lack of self control and a clear INDOCTRINATION of their own beliefs. change is going to happen wheather you like it to or not. sorry dude 🙁
Ditto. I’ve known folks with sustainable ‘lifestyles’, only they wouldn’t call them that, because they didn’t choose them. These people live what we call the ‘third world’; they grow their own food, make their own clothes, tote their own water and firewood. Now and then, if they have a little surplus, they trade it for a bit of cloth, or an iron knife or plowshare. They don’t have running water, or electricity, or cars, or even bicycles, and if they were available, they couldn’t afford them. Their only doctors are traditional shamans, who work feverishly to drive out evil spirits.
The secret of the success of the industrial world is surplus, surplus energy, mostly, that allows a few to do the work of many, e.g. in the USA, where 5% of the population feeds the rest, who spend their days in nice homes, going to comfortable jobs, and visiting blogs on the Internet—the very existence of which would be a mystery to those in the truly ‘sustainable’ world.
The more surplus we and others can generate, the faster the rest of the world will enjoy the ‘lifestyle’ we have come to take for granted. To brag about a ‘sustainable lifestyle’ when you are completely supported by armies of other people (in farming, industry, transportation, communications, etc., etc.) is the height of hypocrisy.
/Mr Lynn
oh btw i already said im vegan
aheaton1:
So…..
No, I said I’d stop. Back to the hospital for more stitches for my tongue.
John 11:44:16 wrote: “It’s like mocking someone for throwing their popcorn bag away in a movie theater. It’s better to mock those who contribute to the problem out of cynical antisocial self-interest, even better to educate rather than mock, and even better to lead by example.”
Anyone who does not follow your request becomes a “cynical antisocial self-interest” person. Interesting moral viewpoint…
“It’s very small, only symbolic, but it’s something, even if only an expression of how much some portion of the population care about our world. The real potential for positive change can come only through public policy, but that requires awareness and widespread support. Small steps like Earth Day are helping to bring about that support.”
It is a small portion BUT and this “but” always comes in at one point, and next is when Hansen says democracy doesn’t work… Hence, the small portion should influence the public policy and enforce the change. That’s really what this almost cute statement is all about. Earth Hour is a request until you’ll manage to make it law and become an injunction. This is the typical politeness of budding totalitarism so grandmas are not afraid… until they are thrown under the wheels.
“If you want to measure statistics, don’t measure energy usage, take polls of what percentage of the public is aware that excess energy use is detrimental, and would support public policy measures to reduce fossil fuel dependence and develop cleaner energy sources. Clearly, those statistics are gradually rising.”
If we want? I would expect you would appreciate to know if your lobbying is successful or not. And we too want to know the difference between your discourse and the reality. Really, listening to you, I am very surprised that the greens are not already representing 90% of the voters…
As for excess energy use being detrimental, we all pay our bills and are all aware how expensive energy is, thank you. Here in Canada, BC Hydro has even offered a two tier rate, soon multi tier so the “rich” can pay… Such discriminations of course are not permitted in the receiving end of the Health Care system but strangely acceptable on the front end…
Again you go on the public policies as if there was no connection between the public purse and those who fill it, the taxpayers who are incidentaly voters. This reminds me the far-left French Besancenot suggesting it is time to block the entire country so the democratic voice of people can be heard… Of course last time we checked in a free national election, Mr Besancenot only received about 5%… In what sense his 5% should dictate the lives of the 95% who did not elect him? Here, in what sense the un-elected greens should highjack the agenda? Because of the science of Global warming? well then think again because that one is not working. Because of some high moral ground? Well who says your moral is more valuable than mine? And we all witnessed during Revolutions that there are always some extremists who will declare your moral, John, is not good enough for them… and you thought you were a good citizen: beware of this unless you are prepared to stand proud along the Robespierre and other Fouquier-Tinville…
There was quite an article recently on Ontario’s wind power backstage? Do you really want to open that can of lobby worms? Because so far it shows how un-elected lobby group are funneling taxpayers money into wind power through people who are judge and parties…
As for the “clearly rising” we do have to take your word for it do we? Or are just the Globe and Mail cute little candle snap shots statistically significant? You may not like it, but in California, the MW are there to show how insignificant this event was despite an impressive media campaign.
Since you are prone to offer your statistics, you’ll kindly provide the source for the financing of this entire media blitz, every year so citizens who do not support this abuse of their dollars can lobby their elected officials to stop wasting their contribution from the public money. After all, this is their money, not yours.
And over at Catlin’s 2nd blog entry on the WWF’s hour they mention:
So their equipment designer thinks the ice could vanish soon. Has he designed equipment that can be used for 20 years, and can measure an increase in thickness?
I’m loving this new one: “CO2 emissions are good for plants!”
1) plants had plenty of CO2 for millions of years before we got here. They don’t need, and don’t benefit from, extra emissions.
2) this is a PR talking point dreamed up by the American Enterprise Institute. There is NO merit to it. Don’t believe me? Check out their site. Be careful if you like to spout this one, you’re being taken in by a lobby group’s PR campaign.
I’ll take a straight debate, hell, I welcome it. But listening to deniers rattle off these fake justifications for business-as-usual is like listening to a 5th grader make up reasons why he should be able to stay up late. You know it’s self-serving and fabricated.
If you want to cautious and skeptical, that’s fine, but try not to be a parrot repeating the lines that get fed to you.
Thunderbird writes “if you want to be cautious and skeptical…” because you do not want to be cautious and skeptical about AGW? Since you are about the benefit of extra CO2 you might learn about meteorology and climatology…
andrew: Your use of name-calling (“d-bag”) puts you in an extremely poor light here. Perhaps you can get away with it on the playground of whatever primary school you are from, but I’d be careful if I were you.
Congratulations on your so-called “green” lifestyle. Try not to hurt yourself patting yourself on the back, though, since bragging is actually a sign of insecurity, and of the need to be “better” than others. We’re actually all for energy conservation, but of course, that isn’t at all what EH was about, was it? It was, essentially, a thinly-veiled CAGW/CC propaganda tool, and a pretty pathetic and desperate one at that. After years of alarmist hype by the MSM, indoctrination in the schools, plus a Nobel-prize winning “movie”, not only are people still “not getting it”, but they are, in fact becoming more skeptical. People are waking up, and realizing they’ve been scammed, and that not only is warming not a problem and not caused by man, but we are, in fact cooling now.
Thunderbird (18:23:48) :
I’m loving this new one: “CO2 emissions are good for plants!”
New? What rock have you been living under? Greenhouses add C02, typically to the 1,000ppm level to optimize plant growth.
1) plants had plenty of CO2 for millions of years before we got here. They don’t need, and don’t benefit from, extra emissions.
You are half right. C02, in the past has been much, much higher, and plants thrived then. Your statement that plants don’t benefit from higher emissions is patently false. The word “need” is just a weasel word on your part, since it’s relative. They manage to do with lower C02 levels, but do better with the higher levels.
2) this is a PR talking point dreamed up by the American Enterprise Institute. There is NO merit to it. Don’t believe me? Check out their site. Be careful if you like to spout this one, you’re being taken in by a lobby group’s PR campaign.
You are the one spouting nonsense and AGW style rhetoric. It’s silly to claim that the idea that C02 is beneficial to plants is an AEI “talking point”, since it’s been known for years. Further, you bringing up AEI is simply a typical AGWer’s diversionary tactic. It isn’t necessary, or even smart for anyone to simply believe what a particular institute or site has to say about a subject.
I’ll take a straight debate, hell, I welcome it.
You seem to be parroting the AGW line pretty well, so I doubt that very much.
And, by the way, we’re climate realists. You people are actually the deniers – of reality. Your will to Believe, unfortunately, is stronger than your desire for the truth.
*Well you know this story had to show up somewhere —*
EARTH HOUR CANDLE BURNS TOWNHOUSE
A Mississauga, Ont. family who tried to light a candle for Earth Hour nearly burned down their townhouse.
Afshan Khalid, 46, said her eight-year-old daughter tried to light a candle before Earth Hour started at 8:30 p.m. Saturday.
The family was going to see friends and when getting ready, they lighted scented candles so they could see. While they were gone, Khalid’s son Omar, 19, came home at 9:30 p.m. with a friend, saw smoke and called 911.
Platoon Chief Paul Hunter of the Mississauga Fire Department said the fire caused an estimated $15,000 damage.
*But you didn’t know it would appear (in the Victoria [BC] Times Colonist directly next to this article–*
MARCH WEATHER LEAVING A COLD IMPRESSION ON VICTORIA
March is going out like a refrigerated lamb.
Temperatures were 1.8 degrees Celsius cooler than normal for the month, said David Jones of Environment Canada.
The normal maximum temperature for this time of year is 12 degrees and the minimum is 4, but most days seemed a lot cooler than that. Yesterday, Victoria reached 7.4 degrees.
But if you’re looking for relief in April, you’ll likely be disappointed.
“It looks like it’s not going to get much better,” Jones said.
“I don’t see warm, sunny dry weather for a week, anyway.”
He said temperatures will remain cool for the next 30 days, according to the computer models. “I think people are getting a little bit antsy about it, looking for a little relief from all this.”
Toronto dropped 15%. Chart found at http://www.blogto.com/environment/
North49 thank you for the link:
“The cynics took a (well-lit?) backseat tonight during Earth Hour as Torontonians blew past last year’s powered down mark on the way to a 15% reduction in electricity use. Just before 9:30 and the official end of Earth Hour the Big Board hit 2545 MW, a 450 MW drop from a typical Toronto Saturday night in late March. That’s the rough equivalent of turning off 750,000 60 watt light bulbs.”
1) what is a typical Toronto Saturday night in late March reference? Another average? How about comparing to the Friday night before?
2) 750,000 60 watt light bulbs may seem a huge number but is roughly the equivalent of two small 40 storeys office towers lights, obviously a rarity in Toronto…
It’s a late entry, but I thought this was rather funny … and typical of how easy it is to write numbers down … it comes from the catlin ice survey that I’m following with great interest …
Tori Taylor, the online communications lady, writes : With an estimated 50 million global participants in the WWF Earth Hour in 2008, this year is set to rise above last year’s figures, with one billion individuals projected to take part, as the amount of people showing interest in climate change and the need to make a stand increases.
that is a 20fold increase in 1 year, and thereby ressembles the meteoric rise of Google on the Nasdaq … if that rate of increase continues, we’ll have to contact a few other planetary systems for next year’s event …
From checking the CAISO site tonight at 11:00 p.m., there was no substantial difference in the power demand during the evening hours from 7:00 through 11, compared to Earth Hour Saturday. Both graphs show the same smooth curve with no dips. Earth Hour was indeed a bust.
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/busted-earth-hour.html
Earth hour is a frivolous experiment in futility and an exercise in exchanging one form of generating “greenhouse gasses” for another.
Read more : http://bikerbernie.wordpress.com/2009/03/28/earth-hour-turn-on-all-your-lights/
b